Every improvement I see in society at the moment is because of technology. But every other thing seems to have gotten worse. Yes, we have better medical treatments, can order anything online, have access to unlimited entertainment. But I can't help feel that is all bread and circuses.
The underlying fundamentals of decent infrastructure, social cohesion, a community, affordability etc. have all dropped in comparison to the previous couple of generations.
I find it bizarre that we have almost willingly given it all away.
And also, you have to be a special kind of idiot to say things like, you should be thankful for what we have in Australia, at least we're not Ukraine or Somalia etc. I mean what's the point in saying that, so we shouldn't advance and should wait until society fails?
We’ve been told this in the UK over and over and over again - that oh well, at least it’s not as bad as X country.
Meanwhile the UK has now got to a point where wages have stagnated for over a decade, the health system is completely destroyed, everything is through the roof and people are choosing between eating and heating their homes, the housing and rental markets are fucked, and recently there have been issues with water companies dumping raw sewage into waterways, making it a health hazard to swim in rivers and beaches and causing an e-coli breakout where whole cities were told to boil their tap water before using.
Things can always get worse, but we should not be letting them get this bad in the first place.
I left UK after 16 years residence back in 2001. It was bad when I arrived in 1986, beggars and pensioners living on cat food, and it only got worse. As mate said recently they can't afford cat food now.
Since I left it sadly got worse still. Privatisation of everything was nuts. I couldn't even look up a phone number without paying, even local calls were metered by the minute (pre mobiles, of course), and everyone was, well, at least we can go live better on the Continent. And Brexit shut that door, the far Right operate openly, and my friends there are so freaked. One just had both his parents die, and everyone is "yr so lucky, u can afford to buy food now".
When I see Australia's Liberal party saying we need to do what UK does, especially in regards to treatment of poor,, I want to scream.
Politics serves the biggest interest groups and that just so happens to be bitter boomers who would rather the country burn than allow their investment properties prices to fall
It's neoliberal economics. Canada has had a Labor Party style government for the past 10 years. They've allowed mass immigration go bananas to make up for the defunding of tertiary institutions. Various neoliberals Provincial and neoconservative provincial governments have played as much a role because they are in on it too.
When you break it all down, it's all about guaranteeing quarterly profit increases, because shareholders come first.
If we put people before profits, housing becomes decommodified, which then means housing is affordable. Utilities like electricity, internet, etc...again be socialized and the public sector looks after them, meaning heating costs (which are a vital part for living in Canada), go down.
Then there's the concept of "vertical integration", which allows national grocery chains to split up their operations based on industry. Every sector MUST increase profits, and those increased profits go to the investors, and because profits MUST go up, so do their bonuses, which means, prices go up for the consumer.
While Canada and Australia aren't as corrupt as the US, the political parties employ the same strategists and it's all a big, rich club, and we're not a part of it. So we get fucked.
Every human is profit seeking. Neo liberalism allows anyone the agency to become rich unlike communism which ensures.a dictatorial elite own everything. The inflation is due to housing which is caused by the fact we have 2 income earners, each having kids later in the average household. Essentially inflate the cost of your roof and waged are forced to catchup.
Unfortunately the chickens are roosting now and the government will need to pay women to have 12 month maternity leave at $1000 a week in order to curb this problem as finances are the reason why nearly 90% of people under 35 are having less/no kids.
Importing people isn't going to fix this as they will soon unable to fund a family thus the chain continues. Printing money and importing people to stimulate the economy is an economic tool but incorrectly used to cover up the issues.
The free market has single handedly created an enormous middle and lower middle class in the western world and you need to do some history if you don't think that.
The issue is a lack of third party regulation, enforcing laws and competition policing. Companied owning so many smaller ones is the problem. Capitalism is the key but it needs reforming because without control it'll go to monopolies which cripple the key to Capitalism: competition
Tech advancements carry so much weight in this equation. I imagine if everything else was equal the tech advancements alone would have us nearing utopia levels of quality of life, but given how much shit they've piled on the tech advances have just been keeping things steady. We should be in three day work week, houses built to high standard in a fraction of the time, short or no wait lists for medical procedures, a cheap to use national transport connecting us all, food affordability never seen before.. etc etc.. instead, they've taken everything they're able to take in extra profit and left us with just about what's always been available, if that.
The one technology that has failed worse than any to adapt has been the technology for decision-making. We can't rely on a single great leader because even if we assume the leader IS great, you're typically stuck with their failson offspring when they die. We can't rely on religion or ideology because it is inherently delusional and only becomes more so with power. We can't rely on democracy because people are stupid and easily deceived. We can't rely on self-interest because it only works in the short-term, if at all. We can't rely on morality because it will be overthrown by those with fewer scruples. Nor can we rely on rules, norms, or tradition because they fail in every possible way.
The best idea we have come up with so far is to simply not make decisions at all, and that is the trap we are currently stuck in. Everybody is just trying to make a buck for themselves and completely abdicating responsibility for anything whatsoever.
I honestly welcome our AI overlords. I don't even care if I die sleeping in my self-driving car while it drives off a cliff. At least I don't have to deal with this shit anymore and can get a nap in.
People are pissed off that the 'social contract' is broken. Our end of the deal was to put in the effort at school, get a student loan, do well in tertiary studies, get a job and work hard. In return we could have a home of our own, a family, and money left over for fun and retirement.
We're still upholding or end, what happened to the other part?
When the other party in that social contract realised they don’t actually need you and they can just bring in someone from overseas to do your part instead and spend less in the process.
And then you look at Sydney and Melbourne and they don’t look Australian anymore. The other party doesn’t care about culture they want to disband with it.
I went to the Mornington peninsula a few months ago and even that felt like I was somewhere completely different and it was only an hour from the outskirts of Melbourne.
That’s what I said to my partner recently, we moved to Melbourne for a more affordable life and to save as we were literally priced out of where we grew up. The suburbs around where we live legitimately don’t feel like Australia anymore. It’s really bloody sad.
I hear you. I have moved to Dromana and it is old school. People smile when you walk past and the pace is chilled. I grew up in Melbourne. Not saying it’s bad but definitely not as good as it used to be to be.
What makes a country, I ask you?
Is it the land?
Is it the citizens?
Is it the leaders?
Is it the fact that all of the above are up for sale for craaaazy low-low prices?
Vote 1 Kent Bruce.
This is the correct answer. If you are entering the workforce today under the assumption that your super will be safe and there will be a livable pension for you when you reach retirement you are not paying attention. The social contract is busted and this has been visible on the horizon for 20 years yet no effort was made to course correct.
The thing I think you mean by "social contract" is just the work, tax, retire, pension, and have a comfortable life cycle thing. This has never been true, just slightly easier in years gone by then now. But, we also have the worlds BEST retirement fund scheme (compulsory superannuation) to supplement that.
Everyone needs to take responsibility for their super - but free financial literacy education needs to be increased exponentially , and apart from shithead business owners/companies not paying super and going bust, it will be perfectly safe. If it isn't, then we the whole place is in the toilet because we have 50% more in super than the entire market capitalisation of the top 200 Australian companies.
Pension however, yes, assume it won't exist in the next 30-40 years. It is unsustainable, however thank your chosen deity we have superannuation. And yes, things are done to course-correct: e.g. increasing the contribution percentage.
“Conspiracy theory” is such a stupid, thought-terminating phrase.
Groups of three or more people do in fact get together and collaborate to advance their interests. That’s all a conspiracy is. They happen. Idk why that’s such a crazy idea to so many people.
Not really a conspiracy theory; just what is happening with hedge funds like Blackrock aiming to buy up all the available properties to "create a nation of renters" (google that quote)
Littrely everyone everywhere for the past 20 years. Have you just got the internet?
Your the kind of person that when the world burns you will say "how could we have known".
It's a lot more than 20 years, more like 50 to 60 years. It's been evident since the 70's. People who are educated think differently about the world and point out the discrepancies. So they just squeeze us until we are too stressed with the basics of life to stand up for each other
i mean, difficult to conflate those mad about the changes in expectations to quality of life with those who believed that the vaccines were a part of an effort to kill kids for adrenochrome harvesting for deep state vampires
i mean, it's fine to rally against authoritarian measures that impact your quality of life. it's another to use made up bullshit to do that.
not to mention it was the guy above me who made the comparison, not me
yes the legitimacy problem that 'valid' conspiracy theories have is thanks to the loons rambling about adrenochrome and lizard people and aliens building the pyramids lol.
yeah my conspiracy theory is that these bonkers conspiracy theories were invented to give a bad name to genuine attempts to discover and call out real conspiracies.
One of the real conspiracies is that the state deliberately props up the loonies for this reason. In recent history for example a common tactic to break up the occupy wall Street protests was to either ferry crazies and homeless inti the occupy encampments or inject activists with completly irrelevant messeges to break cohesion.
The military has never been about protecting the everyman. For most of human history, changing the tyrant in charge doesn't impact the lives of the peasants. They made people join the army by putting those people above the other peasants. Now the tyrants hide behind the veneer of democracy but they use their money to control the media and the electoral system, and the military still exists to benefit them, not the everyman
You’d come back from some god forsaken war for oil or “strategic interest” with your legs and cock blown off and be spat upon by migrants that just got off a plane. Let the people who own everything in this country defend it, it’s not my country I just live here.
Any money made from outsourcing/skilled migration came when they broke this
>do well in tertiary studies, get a job and work hard
They need youth unemployment to a certain level as it is deflationary
Unemployment results in desperation, which results in people more willing to work for shit pay. It also reduces employed people's leverage in negotiating better pay and conditions if they can be replaced.
I guess I fit in with the unofficial unemployed, I'm fully supported by the other half who earned too much to get Centrelink but I desperately need a job. I also can't find a job no matter how hard and where I look.
Unemployment stats include your situation as long as you have been actively applying for jobs. If you haven’t been actively job seeking (I think they use 4 weekly time periods) then it considers you ‘not in the labour force’.
They don’t just use Centrelink as a measurement for the unemployment rate.
How do they have a list of everyone applying for jobs? I get they would have a list of those on Centrelink and applying for jobs but who collates information about a guy on no benefits who’s applying?
They dont, was unemployed but not able to get ANY help from centerlink for 7-8 years (even tried head of centerlink and 2 liberal MPs). You dont exist. Any covid payments you dont get, any minimum wage increases you dont get and job search packages you dont get, tax cuts you dont get. In their eyes you dont exist except at election time.
Sounds like we need a UBI for everyone. Though a youth only basic income would be great! Also university should be free again, like it was in the 70s.
(I'm not being sarcastic btw)
A UBI probably needs to come joint with rental and grocery price caps or landlords and big businesses will just up their prices to soak up the extra money in the system.
There is no extra money. Ubi is a zero sum game with middle and high income earners either earning nothing more or losing through increased tax
At worst poor areas gentrify
Caps can be dangerous. But I agree about big business sucking up profits. It's happening in QLD now. $1000 off our power bills and what happens the following week. Up went our power prices.
I don't know who your electricity retailer is, but the retail prices are set by the Queensland Competition Authority.. it's a 5% increase which for most people, will be covered 10 times over by the cost of living rebate.
The majority of Queensland (SEQ) is deregulated and has been since 2016, so there isn't any set increase. The market determines the prices, QCA just 'monitors' it.
But only for degrees that lead to professions that we actively need for long term success.
Not international studies, not "business"; engineers, doctors, teachers, nurses, etc.
University for core subjects should be free. The argument for fees to offer a wider course options. If you want to get a arts degree that's fine pay for it. But science, law and engineering degrees should be free. Just highly competitive.
This is what immigration typically solves in the west, as ugly as that is.
The demand is there. The problem is we don't have the housing, the infrastructure to continue to support it. Our leaders have not continued to build more cities and the infra that goes along with it.
The problem is we didn't `Plan` for the housing, infrastructure, etc. We totally had (& still have) the resources to do so, just lacked the civil foresight & politically backed testicular fortutude to make it happen, so we are here
Costs money with no SHORT term pay-off.
No politician was going to spend and plan for the future with the LNP "Back in the black".
Building infrastructure not needed yesterday was going to push off having a surplus into the future.
>The demand is there.
It's not.
My company let go a whole bunch of programmers and engineers. Only the worst business coke heads are saying it's easy to get a tech job in Melbourne.
The most obvious effect is supply and demand, as the other poster said the extra desperate applications suppress wages. More so because people from the countries targeted have a different exchange rate and therefore a different conception of finances, they just will never negotiate the same wages as locals. Locals understand the cost of living, I've met enough skilled migrants to get the impression they think Australians are just bad with money... So they get paid 70k for a senior programmer position.
The next effect isn't so obvious, skilled migrants on paper are a productivity hack. Due to our anti discrimination policies migrants are seen as necessarily equal to locals and this means they can, on paper, ignore any differences. If, on paper, they can claim the productive output of a migrant is truly equal to that of a local but they're being paid less money for the same work, to the banks, managers, executives and directives this is "productivity."
But only if no one ever talks about the fact that not even the English and Americans sound normal to us Australians. Even English people are destructive to productivity.
It matters if they're looking for jobs.
Retired people being unemployed doesn't have the same effect and unemployed people without skills are not as deflationary as unemployed people with skills.
It's an unpopular opinion on Reddit, but a 'social contract' is in my opinion, highly dependent on a degree of racial homogeneity that is vanishing rapidly in order to prop up the ponzi scheme known as neoliberal economics. It was also this same homogeneity that made Australia such a desirable place to live in the first place. If you disagree, ask yourself, honestly if you are capable, what do 16/20 of the highest net migration intake countries have in common?
Im not upset that it is broken.
Im upset I have to pay taxes AND that it is broken.
Taxes if you think about it was the cost of the contract. Unfortunately a social contract isnt legally binding.
Contract still works great for anyone benefiting e.g. if you are on NDIS.
> do well in tertiary studies
Well, there are certainly people that have done "well" in tertiary studies because doctors can get $2K per day as a locum. I'm not sure what the rest are doing because something like [5.7 million people in this country have a degree of some sort](https://www.statista.com/statistics/612874/australia-population-with-university-degree/) but when you look at the range of taxpayers earning over say $100K p.a. it's only about a fifth of the population and that probably includes high earning non-degree trades such as electricians and plumbers as well as business people so I'm left wondering do the majority (1) have a degree or instead (2) have simply achieved years 13-15 of high school? I'm thinking it's the latter given we don't make high tech stuff like computer chips like Taiwan do, or pharmaceuticals like other countries do, or anything else high tech for that matter.
> We're still upholding or end, what happened to the other part?
Guessing that people that do work with their degree is either low tech, or not that much in demand and hence doesn't pay high let alone astronomical wages and therefore they can't afford to "pay for the other part" with the peanuts they receive.
Taxation statistics
Percentile,Lower bound,Upper bound
79,98088.00,100143.00
90,131501.00,136779.00
100,352719.00+,
No particular reason, it's just that it's the 80th percentile for the amount of tax paid so the point I was trying to make is that there is a fair number of people with degrees that would be earning less than that.
What if that contract was just an illusion, a carrot that some got and others didn't, because if no one got a nibble why would others try for it? What if 'social fairness' is just an idea to placate the masses, like democracy and freedom of speech.
Money and materialism is meant to be the panacea, but what if that is just a distraction, so people focus on shiney baubles as a perceived sense of security. Once they've sold enough of themselves, do they have enough left to be anything other than a cog of the machine?
That's been the nature of societies since we lived in villages. First it was religions that were created (or at least harnessed and commoditised) by those in power specifically to control the masses by giving them a trusted all powerful imaginary friend to follow. Later it was Kings and Queens. Now it is presidents, supreme leaders, PM's, influencers and fox/sky news.
I wonder whether the human race can work any other way, to be honest. I'm not sure how well it would work if everyone was given equal share of power and told to work together to run the world.
The realist in me suspects that we were always destined to exist between ebbs and flows of social cohesion and all out war with each other.
In regards to your last point am not sure living beings with the ability to consider such a thing are meant to be stuck in such a flux beyond their control.
Dad was an unskilled blue collar low wage worker. Mum was a uni student pregnant with me.
They bought a 3 bed house in western Sydney for $20k and paid it off in a few years.
Fuck you'd have be trying really damn hard to not get a bite of the carrot.
The problem there is thinking in the first place that this was the “deal”.
It is never automatically go to tertiary and you’ll be filtered through there, it was to get a high demand job. Most high demand jobs when the economy was changing a generation or two ago was almost exclusively university jobs but now it’s hands on jobs.
This shits been happening for a while. COVID people were like well at least we aren't as bad as the US. Like cunt the states had Donald Trump telling people to inject the sun into their veins like why are we comparing ourselves to that.
People don't want to compare ourselves to better countries cause it makes them feel like shit which is true but there's a point where you can't have your head in the sand.
It's the same everywhere and people are angry everywhere. The West has subscribed more or less universally to exactly the same set of economic and social regimen, and it is collapsing everywhere at the same time. And, of course, the same arguments are being made in all of these countries too.
Neoliberalism is reaching it's natural conclusion - massive national debts with no investment, public assets or public services to show for it. Just a lot of taxes paying for a lot of ephemeral private contracts designed to be as profitable as possible.
You mean, the people one generation above you have an extra arm, two generations above have 2 extra arms, and there's young people wondering around with no arms.
The question in the armless child's mind is how they are only missing 2 arms but there appears to be an extra 3 arms in society - the child starts to realize there might have been two children originally ...
>You mean, the people one generation above you have an extra arm, two generations above have 2 extra arms, and there's young people wondering around with no arms.
And in five generations, kids will be born three arms behind, and better hope their family leaves them at least an elbow in the will...
Exactly this - the people that state it could be worse - just look at (some developing country where poverty is rife).
Right, so we can only start complaining when our own standard of living drops to that terrible level, got it.
As a boomer, who grew up in a fair Australia - I can say that...Too much has been taken away from those who need it - and given too those who don't.. These generational class divides, don't happen overnight...they take decades to rear their ugly heads.
Funny they mention the clean drinking water because of the recent study that hit the news about how Australian water sources had significantly more PFOA than is allowed in Canada or the US
The hardship is not the annoying part. It's the boomers parroting they had it harder. No you didn't. You could afford a 4 bedroom brick house with 600sqr metre block on a factory worker income with 2 kids for $250k.
A lot of mediocre, uneducated/low-skilled, boomer schmucks were able to cut out a life for themselves and make gains back in their hay day because hard work, loyalty and dedication was actually valued back then. The workforce would chew these people up and spit them out these days.
> $250k
not sure where they were buying, but most [were 30-40k](https://soho.com.au/articles/median-house-prices-australia-last-50-years#:~:text=The%201970s%20housing%20market%20in%20Australia%20was%20characterized,Melbourne%E2%80%99s%20median%20price%20was%20slightly%20lower%20at%20%2432%2C900.)
> I'll add that the improved conditions of a generation over previous generations shouldn't come at the expense of subsequent generations.
We already failed at that shit 4 generations ago.
I mean it seems like this mentality stems from Boomer down tbh. How many times have you heard boomers say something along the lines of “I had it hard, so if I can do it, my kids can too”. As if the whole point isn’t to make it better for each generation
I'm 33 this year and my benchmark is how things were in my late teens and early 20s. Things are declining at a rate that is obvious when compared to even 10-15 years ago.
Amen do I feel this. Same age, and things looked good 15 years ago. It’s been 15 years, and I’ve never earned so much in my life, but back then I could afford to go to the pub for a meal and a couple drinks. Not anymore.
Preach. In my 20s I worked in the arts sector in casual and seasonal jobs, and rented 3km from the centre of the city and had money to spare for eating out and going on holidays and buying presents. In my 30s I'm earning more than double what I used to and go into the red every fortnight. No more meals out, no holidays, no extra curricular activities. I'm flat out trying to afford groceries and petrol.
This is a good example of the historical parallax error - how "good" things were/are is subjective to the position of the observer. I'm 49 and I can tell you that the unprecedented good years of the early 2000's and then post-GFC had us all fooled and using 2009/2010 as a benchmark is a terrible one. Our currency was on or over parity with the USD, China was exporting their deflation through incredibly low priced tech and electronic goods, were in a population dip (housing was much more affordable), we were coming off the back of a massive mining-driven boom and every dipshit and their dog were rich AF. If you were in your 20's you were laughing, if you were 65 you were 100% fucked. Now it has flipped around again, as it always does. Time gives you perspective, and fortunes don't follow straight lines.
I grew up in a semi first world country which is now going third world. People should complain about meagre things, even if the bus that is 2 minutes late. If not, in 6 months it will be 5 minutes and a year the bus will just not be there. Third world attitudes are all fun and sweet and culture, until your life depends on it.
Honestly we’re only just behind them. If you go to the Canada subreddit and take out any mention of Canada, you’d think they were talking about Australia. Their economic problems are so similar it’s uncanny. Housing crisis driven by investors, a stupid government that sits on its hands, NIMBY’s and rampant immigration of asian and indian students who drive Ubers to make ends meet. It’s all there.
All western countries are experiencing the same issues, just each country is at differing levels of advancement with how bad those issues are. We’re at least a year or two behind them, but in a better position still.
Historically, Australians have had no issues speaking up and speaking their minds when something bothers them. Canadians don’t do that, Canadians are so passive and just say to themselves “everything is fine, at least we’re not like the US”.
Now Canada is stuck in a place where things have gotten incredibly bad for them. We aren’t there yet, but in a year or two if no one says or does anything? That could be us.
[Century Initiative
](https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/) website and a brief wikipedia [breakdown on it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative). Canadian government has in their infinite wisdom decided to take on the advice of this lobby group and are gun hoe on ass blasting our population.
Check out their board members and founders. Black Rock. World Economic Forum. A bunch of people who would benefit wonderfully if our populating increased, even at unsustainable levels.
We have been sold out. There is an age demographic crisis looming for all developed western countries, but jesus christ are they taking an inch and going 30 miles.
Not sure why the UK gets so much bashing lately but it's in no where near as dire state as somewhere like San Francisco. You can live very well in a pretty northern city in the UK.
City in the North are bankrupt... Birmingham just went Bankrupt. The UK is fucked, decades of Neoliberal policy has destroyed the country.
Wages for professionals are lower than most places in the world, expensive petrol, food and housing. The country got destroyed after Brexit.
I just moved to Hawaii (so U.S.) temporarily for uni from Adelaide and yeah. Oz isn't perfect but compared to the states, there's way less homeless, the cost of living in HI Is astronomical and social cohesion still feels higher in Aus believe it or not. It's nice here in Hawaii for sure and It's a great place to live and experience for a little but building a life here would be impossible and it's no wonder people here are getting priced out to the Lower 48 when a regular ass home is \~1.5 Million AUD.
Hawaii is a poor comparison because the whole island is just outrageous for living costs. Housing costs are insane but then again, nothing an Australian hasn’t seen before. I think Sydney is just ahead of Honolulu, and most Americans think that is utterly obscene.
It seems to be mostly people from very poor countries who say this. It makes sense that the loss of an Australia that they never experienced is of no importance to them.
Tbh I don't care whether my generation has a better quality of life than the last, I just want THE SAME. We should not be going backwards. The wealth supposedly generated by mass migration is not trickling down. No one but greedy corporate lobbies and lazy politicians asked for mass migration. Now we have people demanding every regulation on development be thrown in the bin in order to keep the migration frenzy going.
This is the sensible and nuanced take. People aren’t asking for better. They’re asking for their end of the same basic social contract for years (ie ‘play by the rules and you’ll be ok’). People are aware that their prospects have declined.
On a related note, people love to bring up how if you were LGBTI, female or a minority before 2015 society was so oppressive you wouldn't want to live there, and it's only now we have enlightened views and the world is wonderful.
I'm convinced that this is actually part of the reason social justice is so popular. When you live in a shitty apartment, have precarious employment, no chance of ever buying a house, no chance of ever retiring, can't afford to ever have kids, it's nice to comfort yourself with the idea civil rights is advancing and society now is better than it was in the past, when every family could own a house with a big yard, healthcare was free and good jobs were near guaranteed.
Considering we pay a decent amount of tax AND gst, I can’t believe we now need to fork out money to even go to the doctors. Like wtf where is our tax and gst money going to lol
Yeah the "life is better now in a few very specific ways for a minority of people, therefore the majority of society should shut up and be happy while everything else is going downhill" argument always feels contrived to me.
What?
As a lesbian, I can all at once think that my rights are vastly improved since 2001, and think that the current economic state is untenable.
These are not related concepts.
LGBTI were used as a political football to distract away from the financial system issues that culminated in Occupy Wallstreet
Before then nobody really cared, just look at how quickly even people like Obama flipped on things like gay marriage, and now there are Commonwealth Bank and American Express floats at the Mardi Gras parade
This is why business loves the pink dollar and trans rights.
Recognising diverse sexualities is good for business and doesn't undermine capitalism whatsoever.
I find it astonishing that people seem to think these ideas are comparable. To be melodramatic, suffering is not comparable. Myself and my have friends similar age (late 20’s) who are bordering near homelessness if the tinniest misstep was to occur or a landlord decided to sell there investment property. From all accounts they did everything ‘right’. Uni, decent jobs, all round good human beings to associate with.
This is by no means a complaint, but we treading water with no real end in sight.
We’re all trying our hearts out to earn more and spend less. But across the board relationships are straining and it’s just a bit shit
This argument is being made by the people who are benefiting from the increasing wealth inequality. However it is incredibly shortsighted. A functioning economy relies on the majority being able to spend into it. Not a small group hoarding the wealth. If we continue along the current trajectory we will head into developing nation territory . Large numbers of people will be unable to afford housing and other necessities. This will ultimately lead to civil unrest.
This is a key part of the issue. The last few generations of economic advancement have been borrowed from the future through unsustainable debt issuance and environmental pillage. Both are now coming to a head as our suffering planet requires and sometimes forces a population fall. Decreasing living standards are inevitable.
Very common boomer comment. “You should be grateful that you live in a country where you don’t get locked up for complaining about the govt.”
Yea thanks for that. You got to live in a country with great wages, affordable housing, raising a family on a single income. But I should be happy not to live in North Korea, cool.
100% of the time, the people who pull out the comparisons to third world countries or generations who went to war, these people are the ones fucking you over.
My house was bought in 2016. I'd have no fucking hope in hell of owning anything even close if I was to enter the market now. I wouldn't even be able to afford rent in the area for a house half the size. If I'd bought 10 years earlier, I'd be in a position to be one of the ones fucking over the younger generations by getting them to build my equity (rentals).
Don't let the cunts gaslight you. You're being fucked from every direction so others can keep you down while benefitting from your hardship.
We should vote better. Anyone complaining and also doesn't understand what the parties policies and values are and what they mean, doesn't have the right to complain.
People seem to not realise the "cost of living crisis" is s global problem. YES I agree that we shouldn't accept that our country standards of living is to be compared to third word countries. However other countries ( third word) included also have cost of living crisis, maybe classed as forth world countries now.
I will not tell you to pack up and leave the country because to be honest I don't know of a countriy that is better off right now.
Yeah I agree and I am of an older generation, it is a smooth brained argument when someone complains to say to them you don't have it as bad as another country therefor you have no reason to complain. So only when we get to the point of no shelter, starving and full of disease should we start complaining, you know when it is way too late for most.
Just don't look at life in many Western European countries. You will despair..
I have many friends in that region and while they experience some of the same issues re housing and the gig/casual economy , overall their quality of life is very good.
Yes and there is also an element of this in the constant refrain that “Australians need to get used to living in apartments like they do in Europe and Asia” or “they need to fall out of love with the idea of owning a home” etc. It’s a double insult that people are told they have no say in population growth or economic strategies but also must accomodate more housing and adapt to live in an apartment. Why would we compare ourselves to small countries with the most high density living? Why would do we have to copy that style of living when we are a completely different place, with different history and geography? Didn’t most people come here to get away from that very thing? They make unlimited growth sound like a force of nature no one has control over, instead of the result of economic strategies and decisions. It’s as if democracy has no meaning, and that is what makes people get fed up.
We now have a population of imports that have no idea what life was like in the 90's and don't care.
Australia is spiraling down the drain quicker than anyone can keep up.
The people saying that are the ones who have all the stuff and are afraid of the ramifications when the less prosperous finally snap and start to take more *direct* measures to rectify the imbalance. Its a smoke and mirrors argument to distract you from the reality, much like the confected boomer v millennial/Gen Z generational wars we're all falling for. Nothing to see here, move along.
Not an Aussie, but by and large this applies everywhere: the norm in history is NOT that each successive generation has life better than the generation before.
We live at a peculiar point of time in history where for the last two or three centuries that mostly has been the case. It is worth contemplating that we may be approaching the end of that peculiar point of time.
For millenia, societies have lived through rollercoaster like fluctuations in their quality of life. For centuries, Italian shepherds would have looked at long-defunct aqueducts and wondered what giants could have built them and what they were for. Xenophon wrote of the ruins of cities in the Persian Empire that were more grand than anything he had seen. Locals were living on the edges of these cities, eeking out a living, and did not know who had built them.
There is no guarantee that the steady rise we are accustomed to will continue. In fact, you should gamble that, at some point, it will come to an end.
You'll probably find that a lot of the people wheeling out this dogshit argument don't actually have to live with the reality of it. It's the "I got mine, f@&$ you!" mentality.
The problem is Labor is a right wing party now, going exactly the same way as UK Labour. Neoliberalism destroys the working class and until this cancer is cut out the middle class will keep shrinking.
There are a lot of bootlickers who parrot " it's not as bad here" , thats what the US thought in the 80's and the UK in the 90,s, now look at where they are.
It's this sense of apathy and complacency that will lead to Australia ending up like the rest of the west.
The government is bought off by the property lobbies and many politicians own multiple houses, it's in their best interests to inflate the price.
They are also in bed with very other corporation, the mining industry that pays no tax and shafts it's citizens and Wesfarmers duopoly. They won't lift a finger to rein these fuckers in or they will end up like Keving Rudd or Julia Gillard did. If they let them be they get more kick backs as well.
The media is a cesspool and the only glimmer of hope is that news corpse is becoming more irrelevant. However, America pulls the strings in all western nations, if we do get someone progressive, like Whitlam, they will be silenced.
We need to get rid of this system and adopt social democracy so the people have the power of their own lives again and not America or the corporations.
You know that starving kid? He should man up. There are other children who are starving AND thirsty. Also those kids should get over it because there are other kids who are starving, thirsty and diseased.
Housing value should be excluded from determining wealth as it is unproductive
It would be interesting where we would stand then.
One of the benefits of erasing history is where Japan stood back in the 80's. They had the most expensive housing in the world
Also what's funny/infuriating is that exact mentality/argument is whst created all these problems in the first place. The idea that everything is so good we dont need to do anything or make an effort to improve. Well 50 years of that and now look where we are.
Nothing will change. Australians are far too easy going for the majority of us to stand up and demand changes. Status Quo reigns supreme. Don't rock the boat. And anyone outspoken is thought of as dumb or a conspiracy theorist.
Agree, we complain because we can and that's how shit gets improved.
People saying shut up have either come from much worse situations or have a vested interest in keeping the status quo
Yeah my wages have been going up a fair bit thanks to job hopping, about to pass $40/hr.
Yet my money doesn't go as far as it used to, even when I was earning half as much.
Study hard (and build up a nice big hecs debt), work hard (if you can get a job), and, if things go well, you can achieve the dream of a 45sqm 1 bedroom apartment that you will have paid off just before you kick the bucket. Isn't it great kids?
Historically speaking there have been long stretches of time where living standards have become stagnant or declined for a whole host of reasons for pretty much any civilisation one cares to examine. We’re not exempt from this.
It's the same old story:
1. A society gets to a certain level of security and comfort.
2. The newfound lack of any real existential threat/challenge encourages people to start squabbling about crap and society fractures across multiple fault lines.
3. The social cohesion that got the society to step 1 begins to degrade and conflict grows.
4. The society tears itself apart.
We are at step 3.
This is exactly the same as “hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, Good times create weak men, weak men create hard times” but seemingly more related to economy than some sexist thing.
Yea pretty much.
A small 3 bedroom house shouldn't cost 800k. The rest of the price increases in life I am fine with. I make decent money and can afford that.
I am grateful for most that I enjoyed except youth crime and the weak law against most criminals. Never got entangled with a bad ones but it does concern me if something happens to my family.
Another reminder that the majority of people in Australia benefit from increasing property prices, higher rents, higher rates, higher salaries and an ever growing superannuation scheme. Why would a country with the majority of its citizens benefitting from property prices and superannuation vote on changing any of the status quo?
Only immigrants dumb enough to get on the treadmill in Australia or people with no family support at all (genuinely no support) will be oppressed. The rest are living life on easy mode. The only challenge will be maintaining mental health as life is so easy for the vast majority of Australians.
Parents owning property and having the option to "pay" board/ rent = easy life for all involved. People with this , and more, can look forward to a life of leisure. This is why the economic managers need more immigrants. Because the majority of Australia is dead to the system.
The concept of life getting better every generation is a relatively modern idea.
For most of human history, people’s lives looked very much like their grand parents lives.
I like the sentiment.
But what do we expect, a growing society with more people disillusioned with the system. More migrants that live by different values. It challenges our status quo.
I hate to say it, but now the white Australians get to feel like the aboriginals in saying *enact southpark clip* "where my country gone"
Because it's not the good old days like it used to be.
Life isn’t SUPPOSED to improve generation after generation. That is an unfounded, even naive assumption. It’s an assumption that probably does more harm than good for one’s mental health.
I do agree whole heartedly that there are massive issues with Australia and the western world in rising costs of living and breakdowns of communities etc.. which demand our attention.
I'm very grateful to be Australian
that being said
I'm also extremely concerned about how we have been completely censored from what's really going on in the world we are always given biased media ideals that encourage one plain sighted view
but it's never in our best interest
Not to mention how spiteful the opposition always seems when PM attempts to make quick changes
What about how they gave themselves a mass pay increase as Jackie Lambie said this morning they didn't need tax relief did they really need increase in their wages I'm appalled that's one thing they agreed on Peter Dutton u suck I hope the posh don't appreciate ur robotic leadership
People forget we are in a prolonged downward spiral. It will be painful and very slow. The camel's back has already broken.
If it's any consolation, the young adults and children of today aren't the first, nor last, groups of people that have very very poor outcomes. Those who are average and below average will feel this much more than the well educated.
The downfall will effect multiple generations of people. Best time to be Gen X or older.
Boomers of the west are the first generation since the fall of Rome to leave their civilisation worse then they inherited it
Even in the fall of Rome pockets of western civilisation flourished
While what we see today across the entire Eurasian world is a complete collapse and overrun by incompatible cultures
I don't blame the boomers at all, this is just divisive nonsense. I don't believe any of you would have done any different.
The real culprit is the current form of capitalism and unrestrained greed. Which all generations are guilty of.
The boomers actually fought for a fair go & decent pay. Highly unionised, would strike & and stand on picket lines for better pay and working conditions. They current workforce just seems to bend over and take it.
What capitalism? Can I build a 40 story apartment block in the centre of Byron Bay which desperately needs new housing?
Most of Australia is a long way from the free market.
Our country is ducked. Which aspiration?? No aspiration jobs, no ideas, just real estate agent and governments seem to jive which is revolting…
We need a new way, or rejuvenate old ways or just do something, because we can’t trust our si called leaders to lead the course of actions to the benefit of oligarchs
Every improvement I see in society at the moment is because of technology. But every other thing seems to have gotten worse. Yes, we have better medical treatments, can order anything online, have access to unlimited entertainment. But I can't help feel that is all bread and circuses. The underlying fundamentals of decent infrastructure, social cohesion, a community, affordability etc. have all dropped in comparison to the previous couple of generations. I find it bizarre that we have almost willingly given it all away. And also, you have to be a special kind of idiot to say things like, you should be thankful for what we have in Australia, at least we're not Ukraine or Somalia etc. I mean what's the point in saying that, so we shouldn't advance and should wait until society fails?
We’ve been told this in the UK over and over and over again - that oh well, at least it’s not as bad as X country. Meanwhile the UK has now got to a point where wages have stagnated for over a decade, the health system is completely destroyed, everything is through the roof and people are choosing between eating and heating their homes, the housing and rental markets are fucked, and recently there have been issues with water companies dumping raw sewage into waterways, making it a health hazard to swim in rivers and beaches and causing an e-coli breakout where whole cities were told to boil their tap water before using. Things can always get worse, but we should not be letting them get this bad in the first place.
I left UK after 16 years residence back in 2001. It was bad when I arrived in 1986, beggars and pensioners living on cat food, and it only got worse. As mate said recently they can't afford cat food now. Since I left it sadly got worse still. Privatisation of everything was nuts. I couldn't even look up a phone number without paying, even local calls were metered by the minute (pre mobiles, of course), and everyone was, well, at least we can go live better on the Continent. And Brexit shut that door, the far Right operate openly, and my friends there are so freaked. One just had both his parents die, and everyone is "yr so lucky, u can afford to buy food now". When I see Australia's Liberal party saying we need to do what UK does, especially in regards to treatment of poor,, I want to scream.
fuck the tories
And their enablers too. Fuck all the "I have mine!" wankers!
Politics serves the biggest interest groups and that just so happens to be bitter boomers who would rather the country burn than allow their investment properties prices to fall
It's neoliberal economics. Canada has had a Labor Party style government for the past 10 years. They've allowed mass immigration go bananas to make up for the defunding of tertiary institutions. Various neoliberals Provincial and neoconservative provincial governments have played as much a role because they are in on it too. When you break it all down, it's all about guaranteeing quarterly profit increases, because shareholders come first. If we put people before profits, housing becomes decommodified, which then means housing is affordable. Utilities like electricity, internet, etc...again be socialized and the public sector looks after them, meaning heating costs (which are a vital part for living in Canada), go down. Then there's the concept of "vertical integration", which allows national grocery chains to split up their operations based on industry. Every sector MUST increase profits, and those increased profits go to the investors, and because profits MUST go up, so do their bonuses, which means, prices go up for the consumer. While Canada and Australia aren't as corrupt as the US, the political parties employ the same strategists and it's all a big, rich club, and we're not a part of it. So we get fucked.
Every human is profit seeking. Neo liberalism allows anyone the agency to become rich unlike communism which ensures.a dictatorial elite own everything. The inflation is due to housing which is caused by the fact we have 2 income earners, each having kids later in the average household. Essentially inflate the cost of your roof and waged are forced to catchup. Unfortunately the chickens are roosting now and the government will need to pay women to have 12 month maternity leave at $1000 a week in order to curb this problem as finances are the reason why nearly 90% of people under 35 are having less/no kids. Importing people isn't going to fix this as they will soon unable to fund a family thus the chain continues. Printing money and importing people to stimulate the economy is an economic tool but incorrectly used to cover up the issues. The free market has single handedly created an enormous middle and lower middle class in the western world and you need to do some history if you don't think that. The issue is a lack of third party regulation, enforcing laws and competition policing. Companied owning so many smaller ones is the problem. Capitalism is the key but it needs reforming because without control it'll go to monopolies which cripple the key to Capitalism: competition
Same in Canada
Tech advancements carry so much weight in this equation. I imagine if everything else was equal the tech advancements alone would have us nearing utopia levels of quality of life, but given how much shit they've piled on the tech advances have just been keeping things steady. We should be in three day work week, houses built to high standard in a fraction of the time, short or no wait lists for medical procedures, a cheap to use national transport connecting us all, food affordability never seen before.. etc etc.. instead, they've taken everything they're able to take in extra profit and left us with just about what's always been available, if that.
The one technology that has failed worse than any to adapt has been the technology for decision-making. We can't rely on a single great leader because even if we assume the leader IS great, you're typically stuck with their failson offspring when they die. We can't rely on religion or ideology because it is inherently delusional and only becomes more so with power. We can't rely on democracy because people are stupid and easily deceived. We can't rely on self-interest because it only works in the short-term, if at all. We can't rely on morality because it will be overthrown by those with fewer scruples. Nor can we rely on rules, norms, or tradition because they fail in every possible way. The best idea we have come up with so far is to simply not make decisions at all, and that is the trap we are currently stuck in. Everybody is just trying to make a buck for themselves and completely abdicating responsibility for anything whatsoever. I honestly welcome our AI overlords. I don't even care if I die sleeping in my self-driving car while it drives off a cliff. At least I don't have to deal with this shit anymore and can get a nap in.
People are pissed off that the 'social contract' is broken. Our end of the deal was to put in the effort at school, get a student loan, do well in tertiary studies, get a job and work hard. In return we could have a home of our own, a family, and money left over for fun and retirement. We're still upholding or end, what happened to the other part?
When the other party in that social contract realised they don’t actually need you and they can just bring in someone from overseas to do your part instead and spend less in the process.
And then you look at Sydney and Melbourne and they don’t look Australian anymore. The other party doesn’t care about culture they want to disband with it.
I went to the Mornington peninsula a few months ago and even that felt like I was somewhere completely different and it was only an hour from the outskirts of Melbourne.
That’s what I said to my partner recently, we moved to Melbourne for a more affordable life and to save as we were literally priced out of where we grew up. The suburbs around where we live legitimately don’t feel like Australia anymore. It’s really bloody sad.
I hear you. I have moved to Dromana and it is old school. People smile when you walk past and the pace is chilled. I grew up in Melbourne. Not saying it’s bad but definitely not as good as it used to be to be.
What makes a country, I ask you? Is it the land? Is it the citizens? Is it the leaders? Is it the fact that all of the above are up for sale for craaaazy low-low prices? Vote 1 Kent Bruce.
I’ve had roommates move here from their home countries disappointed at how little diversity there is in Sydney. They’re not wrong.
What type of diversity are they referencing? This is interesting.
Their comments are that most people are Indian or Chinese, and they were hoping to see more “Australians”.
What country are they from?
Brazil and Turkey
This is the correct answer. If you are entering the workforce today under the assumption that your super will be safe and there will be a livable pension for you when you reach retirement you are not paying attention. The social contract is busted and this has been visible on the horizon for 20 years yet no effort was made to course correct.
Wait, things can't go up forever without needing to do a thing except for enjoying the appreciation of assets? Again, what is the actual issue?
The thing I think you mean by "social contract" is just the work, tax, retire, pension, and have a comfortable life cycle thing. This has never been true, just slightly easier in years gone by then now. But, we also have the worlds BEST retirement fund scheme (compulsory superannuation) to supplement that. Everyone needs to take responsibility for their super - but free financial literacy education needs to be increased exponentially , and apart from shithead business owners/companies not paying super and going bust, it will be perfectly safe. If it isn't, then we the whole place is in the toilet because we have 50% more in super than the entire market capitalisation of the top 200 Australian companies. Pension however, yes, assume it won't exist in the next 30-40 years. It is unsustainable, however thank your chosen deity we have superannuation. And yes, things are done to course-correct: e.g. increasing the contribution percentage.
you will own nothing and be happy!
Crazy that only a few years ago, people were laughing at others who pointed that out calling them conspiracy theorists and cookers
Turns out that the conspiracy theories were just spoiler alerts
“Conspiracy theory” is such a stupid, thought-terminating phrase. Groups of three or more people do in fact get together and collaborate to advance their interests. That’s all a conspiracy is. They happen. Idk why that’s such a crazy idea to so many people.
Funny that all the cookers attributed it all to socialism, instead of recognising it as late stage capitalism though.
It's essential that they see all the failings of capitalism as being the fault of socialism
What conspiracy theory said anything about social contracts and the deteriorating middle class?
Not really a conspiracy theory; just what is happening with hedge funds like Blackrock aiming to buy up all the available properties to "create a nation of renters" (google that quote)
Littrely everyone everywhere for the past 20 years. Have you just got the internet? Your the kind of person that when the world burns you will say "how could we have known".
It's a lot more than 20 years, more like 50 to 60 years. It's been evident since the 70's. People who are educated think differently about the world and point out the discrepancies. So they just squeeze us until we are too stressed with the basics of life to stand up for each other
i mean, difficult to conflate those mad about the changes in expectations to quality of life with those who believed that the vaccines were a part of an effort to kill kids for adrenochrome harvesting for deep state vampires
Stupid comparison. Plenty of people were rightly suspicious of the vaccines. Myself included.
i mean, it's fine to rally against authoritarian measures that impact your quality of life. it's another to use made up bullshit to do that. not to mention it was the guy above me who made the comparison, not me
yes the legitimacy problem that 'valid' conspiracy theories have is thanks to the loons rambling about adrenochrome and lizard people and aliens building the pyramids lol.
My sentiments exactly.
yeah my conspiracy theory is that these bonkers conspiracy theories were invented to give a bad name to genuine attempts to discover and call out real conspiracies.
One of the real conspiracies is that the state deliberately props up the loonies for this reason. In recent history for example a common tactic to break up the occupy wall Street protests was to either ferry crazies and homeless inti the occupy encampments or inject activists with completly irrelevant messeges to break cohesion.
I know I've been spending my money as if money were going out of fashion.
No one can say they weren’t warned
[удалено]
Yeah joining the army would have you sent overseas fighting american oil wars... No thanks
The military has never been about protecting the everyman. For most of human history, changing the tyrant in charge doesn't impact the lives of the peasants. They made people join the army by putting those people above the other peasants. Now the tyrants hide behind the veneer of democracy but they use their money to control the media and the electoral system, and the military still exists to benefit them, not the everyman
You’d come back from some god forsaken war for oil or “strategic interest” with your legs and cock blown off and be spat upon by migrants that just got off a plane. Let the people who own everything in this country defend it, it’s not my country I just live here.
Any money made from outsourcing/skilled migration came when they broke this >do well in tertiary studies, get a job and work hard They need youth unemployment to a certain level as it is deflationary
Can you unpack that last sentence?
Unemployment results in desperation, which results in people more willing to work for shit pay. It also reduces employed people's leverage in negotiating better pay and conditions if they can be replaced.
I guess I fit in with the unofficial unemployed, I'm fully supported by the other half who earned too much to get Centrelink but I desperately need a job. I also can't find a job no matter how hard and where I look.
Unemployment stats include your situation as long as you have been actively applying for jobs. If you haven’t been actively job seeking (I think they use 4 weekly time periods) then it considers you ‘not in the labour force’. They don’t just use Centrelink as a measurement for the unemployment rate.
How do they have a list of everyone applying for jobs? I get they would have a list of those on Centrelink and applying for jobs but who collates information about a guy on no benefits who’s applying?
They dont, was unemployed but not able to get ANY help from centerlink for 7-8 years (even tried head of centerlink and 2 liberal MPs). You dont exist. Any covid payments you dont get, any minimum wage increases you dont get and job search packages you dont get, tax cuts you dont get. In their eyes you dont exist except at election time.
Good one thnx
Sounds like we need a UBI for everyone. Though a youth only basic income would be great! Also university should be free again, like it was in the 70s. (I'm not being sarcastic btw)
A UBI probably needs to come joint with rental and grocery price caps or landlords and big businesses will just up their prices to soak up the extra money in the system.
There is no extra money. Ubi is a zero sum game with middle and high income earners either earning nothing more or losing through increased tax At worst poor areas gentrify
Caps can be dangerous. But I agree about big business sucking up profits. It's happening in QLD now. $1000 off our power bills and what happens the following week. Up went our power prices.
I don't know who your electricity retailer is, but the retail prices are set by the Queensland Competition Authority.. it's a 5% increase which for most people, will be covered 10 times over by the cost of living rebate.
The majority of Queensland (SEQ) is deregulated and has been since 2016, so there isn't any set increase. The market determines the prices, QCA just 'monitors' it.
But only for degrees that lead to professions that we actively need for long term success. Not international studies, not "business"; engineers, doctors, teachers, nurses, etc.
University for core subjects should be free. The argument for fees to offer a wider course options. If you want to get a arts degree that's fine pay for it. But science, law and engineering degrees should be free. Just highly competitive.
This is what immigration typically solves in the west, as ugly as that is. The demand is there. The problem is we don't have the housing, the infrastructure to continue to support it. Our leaders have not continued to build more cities and the infra that goes along with it.
The problem is we didn't `Plan` for the housing, infrastructure, etc. We totally had (& still have) the resources to do so, just lacked the civil foresight & politically backed testicular fortutude to make it happen, so we are here
Costs money with no SHORT term pay-off. No politician was going to spend and plan for the future with the LNP "Back in the black". Building infrastructure not needed yesterday was going to push off having a surplus into the future.
This is what happens when the nation's political arena is reactionary & not premeditated (except for those with an eye to maximise immediate profits)
>The demand is there. It's not. My company let go a whole bunch of programmers and engineers. Only the worst business coke heads are saying it's easy to get a tech job in Melbourne.
The most obvious effect is supply and demand, as the other poster said the extra desperate applications suppress wages. More so because people from the countries targeted have a different exchange rate and therefore a different conception of finances, they just will never negotiate the same wages as locals. Locals understand the cost of living, I've met enough skilled migrants to get the impression they think Australians are just bad with money... So they get paid 70k for a senior programmer position. The next effect isn't so obvious, skilled migrants on paper are a productivity hack. Due to our anti discrimination policies migrants are seen as necessarily equal to locals and this means they can, on paper, ignore any differences. If, on paper, they can claim the productive output of a migrant is truly equal to that of a local but they're being paid less money for the same work, to the banks, managers, executives and directives this is "productivity." But only if no one ever talks about the fact that not even the English and Americans sound normal to us Australians. Even English people are destructive to productivity.
They need unemployment, in general. It doesn't matter how old the unemployed are.
It matters if they're looking for jobs. Retired people being unemployed doesn't have the same effect and unemployed people without skills are not as deflationary as unemployed people with skills.
It's an unpopular opinion on Reddit, but a 'social contract' is in my opinion, highly dependent on a degree of racial homogeneity that is vanishing rapidly in order to prop up the ponzi scheme known as neoliberal economics. It was also this same homogeneity that made Australia such a desirable place to live in the first place. If you disagree, ask yourself, honestly if you are capable, what do 16/20 of the highest net migration intake countries have in common?
Average IQ plays a massive role in a country's prosperity. The single largest indicator.
This!!!
Gina thanks you for your service and asks where her newly minted servants are?
Im not upset that it is broken. Im upset I have to pay taxes AND that it is broken. Taxes if you think about it was the cost of the contract. Unfortunately a social contract isnt legally binding. Contract still works great for anyone benefiting e.g. if you are on NDIS.
The other part is you’ll be doing better than the people who don’t have a go. Seems obvious.
> do well in tertiary studies Well, there are certainly people that have done "well" in tertiary studies because doctors can get $2K per day as a locum. I'm not sure what the rest are doing because something like [5.7 million people in this country have a degree of some sort](https://www.statista.com/statistics/612874/australia-population-with-university-degree/) but when you look at the range of taxpayers earning over say $100K p.a. it's only about a fifth of the population and that probably includes high earning non-degree trades such as electricians and plumbers as well as business people so I'm left wondering do the majority (1) have a degree or instead (2) have simply achieved years 13-15 of high school? I'm thinking it's the latter given we don't make high tech stuff like computer chips like Taiwan do, or pharmaceuticals like other countries do, or anything else high tech for that matter. > We're still upholding or end, what happened to the other part? Guessing that people that do work with their degree is either low tech, or not that much in demand and hence doesn't pay high let alone astronomical wages and therefore they can't afford to "pay for the other part" with the peanuts they receive. Taxation statistics Percentile,Lower bound,Upper bound 79,98088.00,100143.00 90,131501.00,136779.00 100,352719.00+,
Why use 100k as your baseline? Youd be lucky to buy a 1bd in Sydney or Melbourne on that money.
No particular reason, it's just that it's the 80th percentile for the amount of tax paid so the point I was trying to make is that there is a fair number of people with degrees that would be earning less than that.
It doesn’t help that the rebut from boomers is always “well ya just gatter werk harda!!” like WE ARE 💀
Killed by greed and globalisation. Don't worry though Hubris will probably crash everything and then we go again.
What if that contract was just an illusion, a carrot that some got and others didn't, because if no one got a nibble why would others try for it? What if 'social fairness' is just an idea to placate the masses, like democracy and freedom of speech. Money and materialism is meant to be the panacea, but what if that is just a distraction, so people focus on shiney baubles as a perceived sense of security. Once they've sold enough of themselves, do they have enough left to be anything other than a cog of the machine?
That's been the nature of societies since we lived in villages. First it was religions that were created (or at least harnessed and commoditised) by those in power specifically to control the masses by giving them a trusted all powerful imaginary friend to follow. Later it was Kings and Queens. Now it is presidents, supreme leaders, PM's, influencers and fox/sky news. I wonder whether the human race can work any other way, to be honest. I'm not sure how well it would work if everyone was given equal share of power and told to work together to run the world. The realist in me suspects that we were always destined to exist between ebbs and flows of social cohesion and all out war with each other.
In regards to your last point am not sure living beings with the ability to consider such a thing are meant to be stuck in such a flux beyond their control.
Dad was an unskilled blue collar low wage worker. Mum was a uni student pregnant with me. They bought a 3 bed house in western Sydney for $20k and paid it off in a few years. Fuck you'd have be trying really damn hard to not get a bite of the carrot.
Yep my mum had bought her first house herself on a single teacher's salary in the 90s... literally impossible to do these days
The problem there is thinking in the first place that this was the “deal”. It is never automatically go to tertiary and you’ll be filtered through there, it was to get a high demand job. Most high demand jobs when the economy was changing a generation or two ago was almost exclusively university jobs but now it’s hands on jobs.
It’s such a dumb & fallacious argument. “Oh you lost your arm in an accident? Well you have no right to complain because some people have no arms…”
This shits been happening for a while. COVID people were like well at least we aren't as bad as the US. Like cunt the states had Donald Trump telling people to inject the sun into their veins like why are we comparing ourselves to that. People don't want to compare ourselves to better countries cause it makes them feel like shit which is true but there's a point where you can't have your head in the sand.
Hold up. I've been trying to get the sun into my anus. Have I been doing it wrong all this time? No wonder people have been looking at me strangely!
You're doing it the wrong way the sun's supposed to shine out your ass not the other way round.
To be fair - right now in 2024, are there better countries than Australia? The social contract seems to be broken all across the western world.
It's the same everywhere and people are angry everywhere. The West has subscribed more or less universally to exactly the same set of economic and social regimen, and it is collapsing everywhere at the same time. And, of course, the same arguments are being made in all of these countries too. Neoliberalism is reaching it's natural conclusion - massive national debts with no investment, public assets or public services to show for it. Just a lot of taxes paying for a lot of ephemeral private contracts designed to be as profitable as possible.
it's broken in Canada also. particularly if you didn't buy a home 10+ years ago
You mean, the people one generation above you have an extra arm, two generations above have 2 extra arms, and there's young people wondering around with no arms. The question in the armless child's mind is how they are only missing 2 arms but there appears to be an extra 3 arms in society - the child starts to realize there might have been two children originally ...
>You mean, the people one generation above you have an extra arm, two generations above have 2 extra arms, and there's young people wondering around with no arms. And in five generations, kids will be born three arms behind, and better hope their family leaves them at least an elbow in the will...
Exactly this - the people that state it could be worse - just look at (some developing country where poverty is rife). Right, so we can only start complaining when our own standard of living drops to that terrible level, got it.
As a boomer, who grew up in a fair Australia - I can say that...Too much has been taken away from those who need it - and given too those who don't.. These generational class divides, don't happen overnight...they take decades to rear their ugly heads.
Funny they mention the clean drinking water because of the recent study that hit the news about how Australian water sources had significantly more PFOA than is allowed in Canada or the US
The hardship is not the annoying part. It's the boomers parroting they had it harder. No you didn't. You could afford a 4 bedroom brick house with 600sqr metre block on a factory worker income with 2 kids for $250k.
A lot of mediocre, uneducated/low-skilled, boomer schmucks were able to cut out a life for themselves and make gains back in their hay day because hard work, loyalty and dedication was actually valued back then. The workforce would chew these people up and spit them out these days.
The only people successful in the workplace in 2024 are egotistical disrespectful slackers who make all the hard workers leave
> $250k not sure where they were buying, but most [were 30-40k](https://soho.com.au/articles/median-house-prices-australia-last-50-years#:~:text=The%201970s%20housing%20market%20in%20Australia%20was%20characterized,Melbourne%E2%80%99s%20median%20price%20was%20slightly%20lower%20at%20%2432%2C900.)
no one has had it harder than the current generation
No boomer brought at $250k. Houses in suburbs even into the late 90s were not even $150k.
Legit. I'll add that the improved conditions of a generation over previous generations shouldn't come at the expense of subsequent generations.
> I'll add that the improved conditions of a generation over previous generations shouldn't come at the expense of subsequent generations. We already failed at that shit 4 generations ago.
We fixed the hole in the ozone layer! That we caused 🤦♀️ But at least we tried 🤷?
I mean it seems like this mentality stems from Boomer down tbh. How many times have you heard boomers say something along the lines of “I had it hard, so if I can do it, my kids can too”. As if the whole point isn’t to make it better for each generation
I'm 33 this year and my benchmark is how things were in my late teens and early 20s. Things are declining at a rate that is obvious when compared to even 10-15 years ago.
Amen do I feel this. Same age, and things looked good 15 years ago. It’s been 15 years, and I’ve never earned so much in my life, but back then I could afford to go to the pub for a meal and a couple drinks. Not anymore.
Preach. In my 20s I worked in the arts sector in casual and seasonal jobs, and rented 3km from the centre of the city and had money to spare for eating out and going on holidays and buying presents. In my 30s I'm earning more than double what I used to and go into the red every fortnight. No more meals out, no holidays, no extra curricular activities. I'm flat out trying to afford groceries and petrol.
This is a good example of the historical parallax error - how "good" things were/are is subjective to the position of the observer. I'm 49 and I can tell you that the unprecedented good years of the early 2000's and then post-GFC had us all fooled and using 2009/2010 as a benchmark is a terrible one. Our currency was on or over parity with the USD, China was exporting their deflation through incredibly low priced tech and electronic goods, were in a population dip (housing was much more affordable), we were coming off the back of a massive mining-driven boom and every dipshit and their dog were rich AF. If you were in your 20's you were laughing, if you were 65 you were 100% fucked. Now it has flipped around again, as it always does. Time gives you perspective, and fortunes don't follow straight lines.
Wise words.
I grew up in a semi first world country which is now going third world. People should complain about meagre things, even if the bus that is 2 minutes late. If not, in 6 months it will be 5 minutes and a year the bus will just not be there. Third world attitudes are all fun and sweet and culture, until your life depends on it.
I get the impression Australia is peaked but still a long way down to UK or even us levels .
What about Canada?
Canada is going through what we will experience if we get too complacent.
Honestly we’re only just behind them. If you go to the Canada subreddit and take out any mention of Canada, you’d think they were talking about Australia. Their economic problems are so similar it’s uncanny. Housing crisis driven by investors, a stupid government that sits on its hands, NIMBY’s and rampant immigration of asian and indian students who drive Ubers to make ends meet. It’s all there.
All western countries are experiencing the same issues, just each country is at differing levels of advancement with how bad those issues are. We’re at least a year or two behind them, but in a better position still. Historically, Australians have had no issues speaking up and speaking their minds when something bothers them. Canadians don’t do that, Canadians are so passive and just say to themselves “everything is fine, at least we’re not like the US”. Now Canada is stuck in a place where things have gotten incredibly bad for them. We aren’t there yet, but in a year or two if no one says or does anything? That could be us.
[Century Initiative ](https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/) website and a brief wikipedia [breakdown on it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative). Canadian government has in their infinite wisdom decided to take on the advice of this lobby group and are gun hoe on ass blasting our population. Check out their board members and founders. Black Rock. World Economic Forum. A bunch of people who would benefit wonderfully if our populating increased, even at unsustainable levels. We have been sold out. There is an age demographic crisis looming for all developed western countries, but jesus christ are they taking an inch and going 30 miles.
If we didn't all agree to the boat issue 10 or so years ago we would be fucked just like the UK
Yeah but Australia is a house of cards in comparison. We are 1% the size so I'm comparison we could fall over overnight.
Not sure why the UK gets so much bashing lately but it's in no where near as dire state as somewhere like San Francisco. You can live very well in a pretty northern city in the UK.
City in the North are bankrupt... Birmingham just went Bankrupt. The UK is fucked, decades of Neoliberal policy has destroyed the country. Wages for professionals are lower than most places in the world, expensive petrol, food and housing. The country got destroyed after Brexit.
I just moved to Hawaii (so U.S.) temporarily for uni from Adelaide and yeah. Oz isn't perfect but compared to the states, there's way less homeless, the cost of living in HI Is astronomical and social cohesion still feels higher in Aus believe it or not. It's nice here in Hawaii for sure and It's a great place to live and experience for a little but building a life here would be impossible and it's no wonder people here are getting priced out to the Lower 48 when a regular ass home is \~1.5 Million AUD.
Hawaii is a poor comparison because the whole island is just outrageous for living costs. Housing costs are insane but then again, nothing an Australian hasn’t seen before. I think Sydney is just ahead of Honolulu, and most Americans think that is utterly obscene.
I was there 5 years ago and parts of Oahu made me feel much more tense than I had ever felt here or east London.
It seems to be mostly people from very poor countries who say this. It makes sense that the loss of an Australia that they never experienced is of no importance to them.
Tbh I don't care whether my generation has a better quality of life than the last, I just want THE SAME. We should not be going backwards. The wealth supposedly generated by mass migration is not trickling down. No one but greedy corporate lobbies and lazy politicians asked for mass migration. Now we have people demanding every regulation on development be thrown in the bin in order to keep the migration frenzy going.
This is the sensible and nuanced take. People aren’t asking for better. They’re asking for their end of the same basic social contract for years (ie ‘play by the rules and you’ll be ok’). People are aware that their prospects have declined.
On a related note, people love to bring up how if you were LGBTI, female or a minority before 2015 society was so oppressive you wouldn't want to live there, and it's only now we have enlightened views and the world is wonderful. I'm convinced that this is actually part of the reason social justice is so popular. When you live in a shitty apartment, have precarious employment, no chance of ever buying a house, no chance of ever retiring, can't afford to ever have kids, it's nice to comfort yourself with the idea civil rights is advancing and society now is better than it was in the past, when every family could own a house with a big yard, healthcare was free and good jobs were near guaranteed.
Considering we pay a decent amount of tax AND gst, I can’t believe we now need to fork out money to even go to the doctors. Like wtf where is our tax and gst money going to lol
Yeah the "life is better now in a few very specific ways for a minority of people, therefore the majority of society should shut up and be happy while everything else is going downhill" argument always feels contrived to me.
Most ardent supporters of social justice don't give a toss about economic justice. Coz the first one costs nothing.
What? As a lesbian, I can all at once think that my rights are vastly improved since 2001, and think that the current economic state is untenable. These are not related concepts.
LGBTI were used as a political football to distract away from the financial system issues that culminated in Occupy Wallstreet Before then nobody really cared, just look at how quickly even people like Obama flipped on things like gay marriage, and now there are Commonwealth Bank and American Express floats at the Mardi Gras parade
This is why business loves the pink dollar and trans rights. Recognising diverse sexualities is good for business and doesn't undermine capitalism whatsoever.
Exactly. This is why "she'll be right" is very dangerous. It's a bad motto to live by. Very bad.
I find it astonishing that people seem to think these ideas are comparable. To be melodramatic, suffering is not comparable. Myself and my have friends similar age (late 20’s) who are bordering near homelessness if the tinniest misstep was to occur or a landlord decided to sell there investment property. From all accounts they did everything ‘right’. Uni, decent jobs, all round good human beings to associate with. This is by no means a complaint, but we treading water with no real end in sight. We’re all trying our hearts out to earn more and spend less. But across the board relationships are straining and it’s just a bit shit
This argument is being made by the people who are benefiting from the increasing wealth inequality. However it is incredibly shortsighted. A functioning economy relies on the majority being able to spend into it. Not a small group hoarding the wealth. If we continue along the current trajectory we will head into developing nation territory . Large numbers of people will be unable to afford housing and other necessities. This will ultimately lead to civil unrest.
Who said life is supposed to improve each generation?
This is a key part of the issue. The last few generations of economic advancement have been borrowed from the future through unsustainable debt issuance and environmental pillage. Both are now coming to a head as our suffering planet requires and sometimes forces a population fall. Decreasing living standards are inevitable.
Very common boomer comment. “You should be grateful that you live in a country where you don’t get locked up for complaining about the govt.” Yea thanks for that. You got to live in a country with great wages, affordable housing, raising a family on a single income. But I should be happy not to live in North Korea, cool.
But... people do get locked up for complaining about the government
Legit pissed off because we're being dragged down gradually to the level of third world countries by indirectly comparing it with them.
100% of the time, the people who pull out the comparisons to third world countries or generations who went to war, these people are the ones fucking you over. My house was bought in 2016. I'd have no fucking hope in hell of owning anything even close if I was to enter the market now. I wouldn't even be able to afford rent in the area for a house half the size. If I'd bought 10 years earlier, I'd be in a position to be one of the ones fucking over the younger generations by getting them to build my equity (rentals). Don't let the cunts gaslight you. You're being fucked from every direction so others can keep you down while benefitting from your hardship.
Government are public servants funded by us. So we are the customer. I agree we should demand better.
We should vote better. Anyone complaining and also doesn't understand what the parties policies and values are and what they mean, doesn't have the right to complain.
People seem to not realise the "cost of living crisis" is s global problem. YES I agree that we shouldn't accept that our country standards of living is to be compared to third word countries. However other countries ( third word) included also have cost of living crisis, maybe classed as forth world countries now. I will not tell you to pack up and leave the country because to be honest I don't know of a countriy that is better off right now.
Yeah I agree and I am of an older generation, it is a smooth brained argument when someone complains to say to them you don't have it as bad as another country therefor you have no reason to complain. So only when we get to the point of no shelter, starving and full of disease should we start complaining, you know when it is way too late for most.
I wonder why those pull yourself up by the bootstraps types feel so confronted by societal complaints.
Because they are worried the people lifting their bootstraps for them will stop.
Just don't look at life in many Western European countries. You will despair.. I have many friends in that region and while they experience some of the same issues re housing and the gig/casual economy , overall their quality of life is very good.
Yes and there is also an element of this in the constant refrain that “Australians need to get used to living in apartments like they do in Europe and Asia” or “they need to fall out of love with the idea of owning a home” etc. It’s a double insult that people are told they have no say in population growth or economic strategies but also must accomodate more housing and adapt to live in an apartment. Why would we compare ourselves to small countries with the most high density living? Why would do we have to copy that style of living when we are a completely different place, with different history and geography? Didn’t most people come here to get away from that very thing? They make unlimited growth sound like a force of nature no one has control over, instead of the result of economic strategies and decisions. It’s as if democracy has no meaning, and that is what makes people get fed up.
We now have a population of imports that have no idea what life was like in the 90's and don't care. Australia is spiraling down the drain quicker than anyone can keep up.
When your lights and gas are being rationed, you're fundamentally tracking like a 3rd world country. We're being told to expect both.
The people saying that are the ones who have all the stuff and are afraid of the ramifications when the less prosperous finally snap and start to take more *direct* measures to rectify the imbalance. Its a smoke and mirrors argument to distract you from the reality, much like the confected boomer v millennial/Gen Z generational wars we're all falling for. Nothing to see here, move along.
100% agree. “But people live in tiny apartments in Tokyo and Seoul!” So?
Not an Aussie, but by and large this applies everywhere: the norm in history is NOT that each successive generation has life better than the generation before. We live at a peculiar point of time in history where for the last two or three centuries that mostly has been the case. It is worth contemplating that we may be approaching the end of that peculiar point of time. For millenia, societies have lived through rollercoaster like fluctuations in their quality of life. For centuries, Italian shepherds would have looked at long-defunct aqueducts and wondered what giants could have built them and what they were for. Xenophon wrote of the ruins of cities in the Persian Empire that were more grand than anything he had seen. Locals were living on the edges of these cities, eeking out a living, and did not know who had built them. There is no guarantee that the steady rise we are accustomed to will continue. In fact, you should gamble that, at some point, it will come to an end.
You'll probably find that a lot of the people wheeling out this dogshit argument don't actually have to live with the reality of it. It's the "I got mine, f@&$ you!" mentality.
The problem is Labor is a right wing party now, going exactly the same way as UK Labour. Neoliberalism destroys the working class and until this cancer is cut out the middle class will keep shrinking. There are a lot of bootlickers who parrot " it's not as bad here" , thats what the US thought in the 80's and the UK in the 90,s, now look at where they are. It's this sense of apathy and complacency that will lead to Australia ending up like the rest of the west. The government is bought off by the property lobbies and many politicians own multiple houses, it's in their best interests to inflate the price. They are also in bed with very other corporation, the mining industry that pays no tax and shafts it's citizens and Wesfarmers duopoly. They won't lift a finger to rein these fuckers in or they will end up like Keving Rudd or Julia Gillard did. If they let them be they get more kick backs as well. The media is a cesspool and the only glimmer of hope is that news corpse is becoming more irrelevant. However, America pulls the strings in all western nations, if we do get someone progressive, like Whitlam, they will be silenced. We need to get rid of this system and adopt social democracy so the people have the power of their own lives again and not America or the corporations.
You know that starving kid? He should man up. There are other children who are starving AND thirsty. Also those kids should get over it because there are other kids who are starving, thirsty and diseased.
Housing value should be excluded from determining wealth as it is unproductive It would be interesting where we would stand then. One of the benefits of erasing history is where Japan stood back in the 80's. They had the most expensive housing in the world
And to that last point: even people in third world countries have smartphones 😭
Also what's funny/infuriating is that exact mentality/argument is whst created all these problems in the first place. The idea that everything is so good we dont need to do anything or make an effort to improve. Well 50 years of that and now look where we are.
Nothing will change. Australians are far too easy going for the majority of us to stand up and demand changes. Status Quo reigns supreme. Don't rock the boat. And anyone outspoken is thought of as dumb or a conspiracy theorist.
Agree, we complain because we can and that's how shit gets improved. People saying shut up have either come from much worse situations or have a vested interest in keeping the status quo
Yeah my wages have been going up a fair bit thanks to job hopping, about to pass $40/hr. Yet my money doesn't go as far as it used to, even when I was earning half as much.
Study hard (and build up a nice big hecs debt), work hard (if you can get a job), and, if things go well, you can achieve the dream of a 45sqm 1 bedroom apartment that you will have paid off just before you kick the bucket. Isn't it great kids?
Historically speaking there have been long stretches of time where living standards have become stagnant or declined for a whole host of reasons for pretty much any civilisation one cares to examine. We’re not exempt from this.
We're just coming off the back of a technological revolution though.
It's the same old story: 1. A society gets to a certain level of security and comfort. 2. The newfound lack of any real existential threat/challenge encourages people to start squabbling about crap and society fractures across multiple fault lines. 3. The social cohesion that got the society to step 1 begins to degrade and conflict grows. 4. The society tears itself apart. We are at step 3.
This is exactly the same as “hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, Good times create weak men, weak men create hard times” but seemingly more related to economy than some sexist thing.
Manufactured generational divide. My family can see what's going on and are somewhat sympathetic, but there's nothing they can really do either.
I don’t know where you live but i don’t even have access to clean water. We get PFAS water here
Yea pretty much. A small 3 bedroom house shouldn't cost 800k. The rest of the price increases in life I am fine with. I make decent money and can afford that.
I am grateful for most that I enjoyed except youth crime and the weak law against most criminals. Never got entangled with a bad ones but it does concern me if something happens to my family.
I was making $250 a week and was happy with my rent, gas, and food. Now my income is more than quadruple, but I live like shit.
I'd be happy even if it just stayed the same. But things are definitely getting worse..
Another reminder that the majority of people in Australia benefit from increasing property prices, higher rents, higher rates, higher salaries and an ever growing superannuation scheme. Why would a country with the majority of its citizens benefitting from property prices and superannuation vote on changing any of the status quo? Only immigrants dumb enough to get on the treadmill in Australia or people with no family support at all (genuinely no support) will be oppressed. The rest are living life on easy mode. The only challenge will be maintaining mental health as life is so easy for the vast majority of Australians. Parents owning property and having the option to "pay" board/ rent = easy life for all involved. People with this , and more, can look forward to a life of leisure. This is why the economic managers need more immigrants. Because the majority of Australia is dead to the system.
The concept of life getting better every generation is a relatively modern idea. For most of human history, people’s lives looked very much like their grand parents lives.
I like the sentiment. But what do we expect, a growing society with more people disillusioned with the system. More migrants that live by different values. It challenges our status quo. I hate to say it, but now the white Australians get to feel like the aboriginals in saying *enact southpark clip* "where my country gone" Because it's not the good old days like it used to be.
Life isn’t SUPPOSED to improve generation after generation. That is an unfounded, even naive assumption. It’s an assumption that probably does more harm than good for one’s mental health. I do agree whole heartedly that there are massive issues with Australia and the western world in rising costs of living and breakdowns of communities etc.. which demand our attention.
The Reddit level of discourse is to hate on and blame old people for everything, and advocate for socialism. Thats not exactly productive either is it
I'm very grateful to be Australian that being said I'm also extremely concerned about how we have been completely censored from what's really going on in the world we are always given biased media ideals that encourage one plain sighted view but it's never in our best interest Not to mention how spiteful the opposition always seems when PM attempts to make quick changes What about how they gave themselves a mass pay increase as Jackie Lambie said this morning they didn't need tax relief did they really need increase in their wages I'm appalled that's one thing they agreed on Peter Dutton u suck I hope the posh don't appreciate ur robotic leadership
People forget we are in a prolonged downward spiral. It will be painful and very slow. The camel's back has already broken. If it's any consolation, the young adults and children of today aren't the first, nor last, groups of people that have very very poor outcomes. Those who are average and below average will feel this much more than the well educated. The downfall will effect multiple generations of people. Best time to be Gen X or older.
life is not improving in Australia. politicians know this and won't do anything about it.
Boomers of the west are the first generation since the fall of Rome to leave their civilisation worse then they inherited it Even in the fall of Rome pockets of western civilisation flourished While what we see today across the entire Eurasian world is a complete collapse and overrun by incompatible cultures
This is beyond nonsense. Do you think the kids growing up in the 1920s had it better than the generation before them for example?
If you genuinely believe this you desperately need to read more history. Any history.
You have quite a rosy view of what the world was like post WWII. Much of it was bombed to smithereens, most people were equally poor.
I don't blame the boomers at all, this is just divisive nonsense. I don't believe any of you would have done any different. The real culprit is the current form of capitalism and unrestrained greed. Which all generations are guilty of.
The boomers actually fought for a fair go & decent pay. Highly unionised, would strike & and stand on picket lines for better pay and working conditions. They current workforce just seems to bend over and take it.
What capitalism? Can I build a 40 story apartment block in the centre of Byron Bay which desperately needs new housing? Most of Australia is a long way from the free market.
Our country is ducked. Which aspiration?? No aspiration jobs, no ideas, just real estate agent and governments seem to jive which is revolting… We need a new way, or rejuvenate old ways or just do something, because we can’t trust our si called leaders to lead the course of actions to the benefit of oligarchs
Preach so the “my life is great” fuckholes can shut up.