home affordability, Aust's declining agricultural performance in global terms, Aust's high level of household debt, Aust's declining manufacturing performance, Australia's increasing reliance upon an authoritarian and corrupt nation for its wellbeing.

You all seem, together with the majority of economists, to be ignoring
the underlying fundamental of the influence of energy.

ALL recessions have, except for the dot.com recession, been preceded
by a spike in oil prices.
Peak crude oil according to the IEA occurred in 2006.
This caused a climb in fuel prices peaking in July 2008.

The extra cost of fuel and the resulting higher cost of food placed
very many mortgage holders into a situation of buying petrol, food or
paying the mortgage.

That triggered off those CDOs etc a few months later and the rest is history.

It is not all about money, it is about energy and no growth occurs
if you cannot afford the energy because it is increasing expensive to extract.

yes, Bazz Aust's carefree attitude about energy is another one as many more people struggle to meet rising fuel and food costs while we seem happy just to sell as much as possible overseas.

I am sure there are many more issues which Aust seems to have a care free attitude about, relying on the growth of china and so on.

Like I said before, I want the IPA and CIS to demonstrate how Aust will benefit long term relying on more of the same recent trends. It worked for a while, but we will see what we have left in coming years

Rhian, watching Business program on ABC today. One guest optimistic and pointed to three services jobs being created for every one manufacturing job lost in recent times, and health being an important example.

But I want to know how health can keep expanding given the need to pay for it. Remember budget pressures now, and health big portion of spending.

Chris, most people think that a growth in service jobs is an increase
in the economy. It is not, it is an overhead on the economy.

About the only place where service jobs help is in the repair of
machines, appliances etc etc as they save the cost of buying a new one.

Generally services is like taking in other peoples washing.
It produces nothing but is a cost on the economy.

Chris
You are right that financing health services will be an increasing challenge with the aging population, especially as the boomer generation has high expectations of both lifestyle and services in retirement. I’m not sure what this has to do with free trade or anti-dumping provisions, though.

Bazz
Services are just as economically important as production jobs.

Even within production industries like mining and manufacturing, and even agriculture, an increasing proportion of jobs is in service functions, like research, marketing, IT, logistics, etc. Operators standing on a factory floor actually making stuff are an increasingly rare breed. And having once done that type of work, I cheer this development