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The Forum > Article Comments > The politics of youth > Comments

The politics of youth : Comments

By Kellie Tranter, published 22/2/2012

When the many become really desperate, they're hardly going to accommodate the social and political order.

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Hi Kellie,

Just a bit of background.

We are selling assets, borrowing and allowing massive environmental damage to occur with mining.......all because Australia is panicking for income to support our growing population's appetite for infrastructure and jobs.

Our manufacturing is collapsing, our World rankings of our universities and school leavers academic standards, are falling.

As Paul Keating said, " population growth will lead to unemployment, if you don't grow the economy ". The opposite is also true, that you can have full employment if you don't grow the economy........if you stabilise population growth.

Denmark with a basically stable population of 5 million , export all over the world. How ? Because they invest in education, technology and efficient, high end capital intensive manufacturing.

Australia can't, because we invest in more people.........which is an investment in more pollution.

The billions spent on growth infrastructure and services, must be spent alternatively on education, health and emerging technology.

Forget "bank" and Business Council economists pushing for more population growth.........this is the last thing we need.

Stabilisation designs out youth unemployment.

(happy to chat further, if you have any queries)

Cheers,

Ralph

rpbennett@optusnet.com.au
Posted by Ralph Bennett, Thursday, 23 February 2012 12:16:45 AM
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Perhaps the first problem is those parents who continue to bring all those kids into the world; the second problem upheaval in the Third World generating immigration exodus; the third problem unbalanced free-trade competition; the fourth, a lack of focus on internal balance and self-sufficiency; and the fifth, unrealistic expectations.

I started losing hope when Aus lost its major woollen mills and ship building; now we look like losing steel and aluminium mills/smelters, and possibly an automotive industry; and we've never had a significant leather industry. In the world of specialisation we excel, as a generalist we are a dismal failure - grabbing every cheap import with nary a thought for local impacts; selling our soul for trade agreements; inviting multinationals to exploit our natural resources because we lack capital, backbone and foresight; ever the follower and never the leader.

Trade unions and Labor seek ever higher wages and conditions, and job security for the few - but what of the yet to be employed? Industy is forced to streamline and automate, go offshore, or close down - and out go the jobs. Had contact with a call-centre lately?

Education and job/skills training is great - but there have to be the jobs at the end of it. It is time to reclaim the playing field - much to the dismay of those who hate protectionism. Tourism and overseas student education is not going to do it for us, we need industry.

Remember when we were all going to be able to retire at 55-60? Now they want to roll it back to 70. Great for the unemployed! Olds going to be a burden on the young? If the young have no jobs?

Sunshine to burn, and we lost our solar panel manufacture because of cheap (Chinese) imports. We've got to build something, or we die. Jobs, innovate - whatever the cost - or we die.

It's easy to blame corporate largesse, but we all have to relearn about sharing - the wealth, and the pain.
Posted by Saltpetre, Thursday, 23 February 2012 3:10:30 AM
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Yabby,
Luxury! Bloody luxury...!"

I were a brickie's labourer at 15 (and that wasn't my first job) but knew how to use a shovel long before that, and I'd be willing to bet I've done it tougher than you have, but thanks for illustrating my point that the older guys love to romanticise themselves as self-made men: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

THe fact is it's overwhelmingly the older generation that's the most decadent and taking the lion's share of national wealth: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/07/us-wealth-gap-young-old_n_1079372.html
And they go on squandering it unto senility, which is now of course big business: http://www.uq.edu.au/news/index.html?article=3775 and at the expense of the younger generation.
And I'm not just talking about personal wealth, which is of course highly variable; the West also spends far too much money on innovation devoted to extending decrepit life, to eking it out till the money's spent, when the money should be used to secure the viability of emergent generations. But that's the free market; it doesn't give a toss about sustainability or the future or anything else, only about drawing of profit--and the smelter's always near the ore.

Ralph Bennett,
economic growth is dependent on the growth of infrastructure, which is dependent on population growth or growing living standards. An economy can't grow in a vacuum. Economic growth and stable population at home just means it's being exported, i.e. population/infrastructure growth abroad. I agree with the Denmark model in the current dispensation as the best of all possible worlds. But the reality is that a profligate dispensation dependent on endless economic growth, in a finite system, cannot be viable in the median to long term. I'm horse from saying it but no one wants to face reality.
Posted by Squeers, Thursday, 23 February 2012 7:59:38 AM
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*I were a brickie's labourer at 15*

Well there you go Squeers. As matter of fact we still need brickie's
labourers today. So why shouldn't our youth work their way up as
we did?

Yes, things were tougher some 40 years ago. People used to move
around to find work. Thats how it should be.

Our meatworks today largely depend on 457 workers, our fruit is
picked by backpackers, because you parents have brought up a heap
of brats. They stand to inherit more money then any generation before
then, when you fall off the old perch.
Posted by Yabby, Thursday, 23 February 2012 8:53:31 AM
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"...because you parents have brought up a heap of brats..."

It's interesting that the "brats" participating in the Occupy Movement don't seem to really know which way forward. They know something is diabolically awry with "the system" but, for some reason, they appear to be suffering inertia - as if they're waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

Former decorated teacher, John Taylor Gatto, wrote a book titled "Dumbing Us Down". In it he tells of the "seven lessons" he was required to instill in his charges:

1. Confusion -
"...Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the un-relating of everything. I teach too much..."

2. Class Position -
"I teach that students must stay in the class where they belong. I don't know who decides my kids belong there but it's not my business..."

3. Indifference
"I teach children not to care too much about anything even though they want to make it appear that they do. How I do this is very subtle. I do it by demanding that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigourously with each other for my favour..."

4. Emotional Dependency
"By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes and disgraces, I teach kids to surrender their will to the predestined chain of command...."

5. Intellectual Dependency
"Good students wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. this is the most important lesson of them all, we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves to make the meanings in our lives..."

6. Provisional Self-Esteem
"..... you'll know how impossible it is to make the confident conform. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged..."

7.One Can't Hide
"I teach students that they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance by me and my colleagues. There are no private places for children, there is no private time..."

I wonder why our youth is revolting?....we're the "brats" for perpetuating the dysfunction.
Posted by Poirot, Thursday, 23 February 2012 9:30:22 AM
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.because you parents have brought up a heap of brats..."
Poirot,
Yes & no. I'd say many parents didn't fail at all. The system failed them. The system dreamed up by ignorant academic sociological experts & the like.
Those who enforced the "no slap' policy & those who got rid of National service are the ones at fault & yet still policy makers still listen to these morons.
It used to be that 1 in 4 Australians wasn't born here but now it's 3 in 4 are devoid of foresight.
Posted by individual, Thursday, 23 February 2012 10:52:18 AM
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