Someone knocked Hasbeen for his comments regarding the 1950s.
Well I was not married during that decade but later but I can tell you
he is pretty close to dead right !

My wife and I raised three sons and my wife did not have the problem
of juggling work and family that can be seen hassling the modern wife.
No wondering what to do if the child minding fees go up, no trying
to get someone else to pick up the kids if work threw up sudden
emergency, etc etc. I don't have to tell you all about it.
Just watch your daughters in law.

Why was it so ?
Simple, we were not stupid enough to borrow on two incomes !
The current families would not borrow on two incomes if they could
avoid it either.
So why do they ?
Well, it goes back to the 1970s when the feminist movement pushed
the government into forcing the lending authorities into lending
on both incomes.
Oh dear, what do you think happened then ?
All you people who are always saying that the market will fix
everything will know won't you.
Surprise, surprise, the price of houses rose to meet the amount of
money available.
So the feminists shot themselves and their sisters in the foot so
now they don't have the option of working, now they HAVE to work.

The wives not having to work was the single most great thing for
families in the 1950s to 1980s.
Compared to the rat race that I now see it was pretty good.
We were able to raise and school three children and pay the house off
on 17 pounds ($34)a week. We bought our furniture with cash and cars
with cash. Not all at once but gradually.
We had yearly holiday trips interstate with three kids.
I had all the radio gear for my hobby that I wanted, we had two TVs
washing machines, dishwasher etc etc just like people do now.

No Hasbeen is right, life was good then and we bought what we wanted.

I ran out of space.
One of the things I was going to say was the population then was about
12 or 15 million if my memory serves and I can't say the near double
population has improved things much. Many things are worse especially
the affordability of housing, and thats about as fundermental as it gets.

Bazz in 1960 household savings as a percentage of GDP was 18%, today it is 2%. In 1980 the average take home pay was $250 and the average suburban house was $36,000. Now the take home is $700 and the same house $360,000. Three hundred percent rise in wages and a thousand percent rise in the price of the house. Our kids might be spend crazy, it is what consumerism is based on, but they are woefully disadvantaged in comparison to we who went before when it comes to "the great Aussie dream".

Pericles,

How do you explain the top 10 countries of the World Economic Forum Competitiveness Index? Down from Switzerland (the leader) with their population growth rates (from CIA World Factbook), they are: Switzerland (0.22%), Sweden (0.16%), Singapore (0.86%), United States (0.97%), Germany (-0.06%), Japan (-0.24%), Finland (0.08%), Netherlands (0.39%), Denmark (0.27%), and Canada (0.80%). (Australia is 1.7% (ABS)). There another four low growth European countries in the top 20: Norway (0.33%), France (0.53%), Austria (0.04%), and Belgium (0.08%). All these countries also rank as Very High Human Development Countries on the UN Human Development Index. How is it possible for a country to have a stable population and still be competitive and give its people decent lives?

The US, on the other hand, has followed your advice and had lots of immigration and other "pro-capitalist" policies, so they should be in great shape. In fact, there has been economic growth, but the bottom 90% of the population have had fairly stagnant real incomes since 1974. See

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/articles/view/6

Note from the first bar chart that family incomes rose much faster from 1947 to 1979 and the gains were more equally distributed than they were later on. The US had essentially zero net immigration until 1965, and it took time for numbers to build up after that. This was also before the era of off-shoring and other such policies.

This graph on child poverty rates in the different OECD countries is also instructive

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/view/116

and this one on the share of income going to the top 0.1% of the population

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/view/120

Loudmouth,

No one thinks that the extremely low fertility rates to be found in Italy, Japan, or South Korea are good or will not lead to problems. In China, they were faced with collapse because of very low arable land per person unless they did something drastic. Demographic momentum can keep a country growing for up to 70 years after the fertility rate falls down to or below replacement level. That is why Australia still has some natural increase, even though the fertility rate has been below replacement level since 1976.

*Yabby if you take manufacturing from an economy it wilts and so do the citizens*

Sonofgloin, Japan has hardly taken manufacture out of its economy.
But indeed, robots are doing more and more of the assembly, far
less workers required. I've actually heard of production lines
totally automated, just some overseers in the control room.

That is of course great news for the Japanese, as there will be no
shortage of labour, as those pesky gloom and doom merchants are
predicting and plenty of labour to take care of the elderly.

It opens up another potential growth area for the Japanese. Skilled
medical care, surgery etc. No need for everyone to flock to America,
they need some serious competition. Every American surgeon that I've
met, reckons he should earn at least a million a year and plenty
of Arabs and other rich people from third world countries, flock
there for treatment, despite the rip off charges.

Yabby:>> That is of course great news for the Japanese, as there will be no shortage of labour, as those pesky gloom and doom merchants are
predicting and plenty of labour to take care of the elderly<<

Yabby, Japan was not built on service industries; it was built on producing products for export.

Re the medical service industry, unless you’re from a second world nation, if you have the money to travel os to obtain quality medical expertise then you could afford the best in your country of origin. I don't think medical procedures will ever come up as a percentage of GDP, and to suggest it is typical of the flagrant and diabolical machinations of your mischievous mindset, no offence.