Our “economic miracle” of 104 quarters of GDP growth without a recession today doesn’t come from digging rocks out of the ground, shipping the by-products of dead fossils and selling stuff we grow any more. Mining, which used to be 19 per cent of GDP, is now 6.8 per cent and falling. Mining has fallen to the sixth largest industry in the country. Even combined with agriculture the total is now only 10 per cent of GDP.
ARE WE BUYING HOUSES WITH FLAT WHITES?
With an economy that is 68 per cent services, as I believe John Hewson put it, the entire country is basically sitting around serving each other cups of coffee or, as the Chief Scientist of Australia would prefer, smashed avocado.
Successive Australian governments have achieved economic growth by blowing a property bubble on a scale like no other.
A bubble that has lasted for 55 years and seen prices increase 6556 per cent since 1961, making this the longest running property bubble in the world (on average, “upswings” last 13 years).
SeaGypsy wrote:Being virtually all of your properties are expressly for tourist accommodation, a take it or leave it market- not quite the target of my disgust.
In Australia & the more prosperous cities globally, where so called slums have been outlawed or never existed, the lowest basic level of accommodation has become ludicrously & unjustifiably expensive. Can't afford it- tough, sleep in the streets, but don't get too comfortable doing that either (expect semi constant harrasment/ being pushed into tourist accommodation, bunk houses etc.)
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
SeaGypsy wrote:The rentier class is bleeding the working poor to death...
Tanada wrote:
IMO much safer to be poor in a rural community than an urban one. For one thing when you know people you tend to build relationships with them for good or ill, at least you know what to expect and who specifically to never trust. Every time I visit a city in the top 100 in the USA I feel as if a great weight of humanity is squashing the decency and joy right out of my being. When I was a child and into my 30's I would visit Detroit for cultural events, sporting events, or medical appointments and as I grew older I despised visiting more and more to the point I do not choose to go there now if I can find any way to avoid it. Cleveland and Toledo are not a great deal better, but you have to do what you must to get through life.
Tanada wrote:SeaGypsy wrote:Being virtually all of your properties are expressly for tourist accommodation, a take it or leave it market- not quite the target of my disgust.
In Australia & the more prosperous cities globally, where so called slums have been outlawed or never existed, the lowest basic level of accommodation has become ludicrously & unjustifiably expensive. Can't afford it- tough, sleep in the streets, but don't get too comfortable doing that either (expect semi constant harrasment/ being pushed into tourist accommodation, bunk houses etc.)
IMO much safer to be poor in a rural community than an urban one. For one thing when you know people you tend to build relationships with them for good or ill, at least you know what to expect and who specifically to never trust. Every time I visit a city in the top 100 in the USA I feel as if a great weight of humanity is squashing the decency and joy right out of my being. When I was a child and into my 30's I would visit Detroit for cultural events, sporting events, or medical appointments and as I grew older I despised visiting more and more to the point I do not choose to go there now if I can find any way to avoid it. Cleveland and Toledo are not a great deal better, but you have to do what you must to get through life.
I wonder how the 400 million chinese feel about this ...you know...the ones who abandoned the toil of rural agrarian subsistence farming to the factories of mega metropolis urban areas during the past 25 years
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