If someone earns $2,000 in a week, this would be considered a reasonably high wage (at about $100,000 a year).

But take out tax and superannuation payments, then take out rent or mortgage payments, then take out the cost of electricity and petrol, then take out any insurance or loan repayments, then take out the cost of food and clothing, then take out the cost of children and education, then there isn’t much left out of $2,000 a week.

As the population gets older and more retire, the tax revenue from employees gets less, and there is also a double whammy appearing with the increasing number of disadvantaged children (with estimates of up to 1,000,000 within 20 years) who are unlikely to get well paid jobs in their working life.

Future tax revenue from employees cannot be depended on, and there will have to be more profitable industry to pay more company tax.

However, this is not likely if the resources boom declines, and there are few manufacturing companies in Australia that carry out value adding, with a great concentration upon importation of value added products.

Well Vanna, if you cannot afford to raise children, who asked you to make them in the first place? and if you cannot afford to repay loans, who asked you to take them in the first place?

As for electricity and petrol, our parents have used much less and our grandparents even further less.

Getting a "well paid job" is often not an advantage, but rather an invitation to join the same rat-race and being enslaved to that job. Why should you wish it on your children instead of teaching them to live responsibly and more self-sufficiently?