*We could get stuck in and make them ourselves.*

We could indeed Rhian, so then with our high costs and small
population, those things would be so expensive that the poor could
not afford to buy them. They would suffer the most.

So now to solve it, you want to force women back to their sewing
machines and drag old pensioners from retirement to force them
onto the production lines.

Perhaps our present system of them deciding for themselves what they
want to buy and where they want to work, is the far better option.
They are clearly voting that way, with their wallets and their feet.

Next, you'd be forcing efficient industries like agriculture, who
export most of their production, to pay far higher prices for their
inputs, making them less competitive and sending many to the wall.
Hardly clever thinking.

Sorry, that was Sarnian, not Rhian.

Yabby, at the rate Coles and Woolwsorths are importing cheap food, we won't have any farmers left soon.

David

*Yabby, at the rate Coles and Woolwsorths are importing cheap food, we won't have any farmers left soon*

Oh nonsense. Australian farmers still export two thirds of what
they produce. But we export commodities, boatloads of wheat, oats,
barley, meat, sugar, etc. We import some processed food, so
what?

Countries like China for instance, used to buy none of our lamb.
Now they buy 25'000 tonnes of it, along with huge volumes of
milk powder, lobsters, wine and all the rest. Trade is a two
way street, both benefit.

If there were no global markets, farmers would soon go broke.

ABS data released today show 38% real growth in incomes of low-income Australian families in the past decade:

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/1370.0.55.001~2011~Main%20Features~Household%20economic%20wellbeing~18

Also improvements in education levels and life expectancy.

VK3AUU
still looking for evidence of the falling living standards you're so certain of ....

Rhian, I suggest that you go and talk to the Salvo's and other aid organisations and see whether their clientele is diminishing. Unfortunately (for you) statistics don't tell the real story. If you sort out individual cases from averages, you then get the real picture.

David