The rising cost of living: Why is it so? Well because not for profit essential services have been privatised and now operate on the profit principle, none more despicable than aged care where the operators bleed their patrons until they die!

The never ending practise of overleveraging overvalued assets is part of the reason and forces unproductive enterprises to seek relief in the aforementioned manner, thus adding to the upward price wage spiral and the rising price of everything!

Every western style economy rests on just two support pillars, energy and capital! And we made our worst mistake allowing profit motivated, private, price gouging entities absolute control of either!

There is an absolute plethora of free market business opportunities out there that would be seriously enhanced by returning control of both energy provision and all capital to not for profit public ownership!

Everything we buy or consume now factors in the obscene profit paradigms of those two!

Middlemen profit takers, which includes most duplicating state governments virtually double the cost of living, and for what, some paper shuffling?

Fair and reasonable profits have been replaced by maximised profits and a reinventing of capitalism so the emphasis now amplifies the capital gains prospects over solid reliable dividend streams.

Finally there is just too much debt!

We are swimming/drowning in it! Why even business inventories are now held hostage to debt servicing requirements which simply has to force prices upward!

When I was a boy, business was very different, with poorly managed enterprises not able to produce/carry sufficient operating capital to restock as and when required, allowed to fail!

Competition, it seems, has been replaced by covert collusion and price gouging? Our economy is always harmed by asset stripping, tax avoiding, profit repatriating, price gouging, debt laden, foreign speculators, who more than anyone, force upward the cost of living all while effectively destroying former discretionary spending, and another prime reason, for a forced upward, cost of living paradigm!
Alan B.

The rising cost of living, why is it so? Well because there's too much economic led in the economic saddlebag. We are just one nation not seven! With eight governments working at different state or federal based imperatives! The mere existence of ever duplicating state governments and their veritable armies of paper shuffling make work bureaucrats add 70 billions per to the cost of government, which always factors into the cost of living! As has privatised public amenity/service provision! With most business/ food production/manufacturing/value adding processing, impacted negatively by rising energy prices almost more than anything else!

And not helped by insane tax practises designed for tax practise lawyers and accountants, all who have to be paid for as a averaged 7% ripped from the average bottom line! And that seven percent cascades ever upward doubling every time it does, all while impacting negatively on the ever rising cost of just getting by!

Something the blinded by science, Author seems to want to gloss over with his profit imperative essay!?

We need real tax root branch and twig reform not endless tweaking masquerading as reform! We need to de-privatise both energy and capital provision either as publicly owned and operated, or by preferencing the cooperative capitalism model. Needed to replace monstrous edifices grown too big to fail/price gouging, tax avoiding profit repatriation of, foreign entities!

Too big to fail, usually also means massively top heavy and over managed by overpaid oligarchs merely masquerading, all too often, as competent business managers?

Affordable housing also impacts on cost of living pressure as rising debt servicing destroys, domestic economy essential, former discretionary spending! And only possible through (state government initiated/controlled?) rationed urban land release!
Alan B.

Too many words. It's up to people to work out their own finances and to realise that they cannot spend money they don't have. The world would be a better place with economists.

You know an argument is going to be weak when "great" Austrian school economists are quoted to support it. They all failed to understand how the availability of money influences the amount of economic activity. Those who understand that understand why the relationship between quantity of money and purchasing power is more complicated than Darren claims.

Another glaring omission is the possibility of different long and short term effects. For example, building a new road may raise the cost of living in the short term (due to the cost of construction) but reduce it in the long term (due to the lower cost of transportation).

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ttbn, the way our economy works, it's impossible to save unless someone else borrows. Money, apart from the small proportion in notes and coins, sums to zero.

Borrowers require lenders rathan savers per se. Lent money often comes from borrowed from other folks, also borrowed money! Banks lend created money, created by quite massively securitizing mortgages etc, then claiming them as products!

Products implying something tangible of inherent worth that can just like the Emperor's new clothes, be bought and sold!

Moreover, the more we import when measured against exports the more we tend to pay in real terms, like for say a tesla 3, which costs just 35,000 USD, costing a predicted 60,000 AUD, here? Or why things Amazon can sell in more heavily taxed America costing 30%+ more here?

This couldn't happen without the implied consent of our Federal parliament?

It is said that 30% of us don't understand politics, With another 30% who don't understand economics, with 40% understanding neither, ttbn!

Sadly it is the latter (please explain) group who decide all elections! And the reason the nation is in its current parlous state?

Can any of you imagine what would become of us if the massively debt laden chinese went under and it could? Then too many words wouldn't trouble the economically illiterate, just too few dollars in their income streams! And a pressing reason to stop resting on our laurels and remaining overly dependant on China!

We need to de-privatize public amenity/essential service and repeat what the oldies, less of them were able to do, with far less comparative money, by just ending the excuse making and prioritize an energy led financial recovery. Preferably well ahead of any Chinese financial collapse!

By building and rolling out thorium powered reactors and then tasking them with pumping quite massive quantities of desalinated water into our most arid regions!

And just not as hard as some folks are made to think! After all, we can find billions for proposed (clean) coal fired power or subsidizing foreign coal miners!
Alan B.

Alan B,,
"Can any of you imagine what would become of us if the massively debt laden chinese went under and it could?"
Your grammar is so bad that I'm not sure exactly what you mean. But if you mean what I think you mean, your fears are unfounded because China could solve the problem instantly by floating its currency.