"But if you are fleeing something as banal as poverty, economic hardship, low wages, a lack of opportunity or jobs, or if you're just looking for a better life for you and your family - then the door to Australia is closed". Australia is not the escape valve for all the problems in the world, and our carrying capacity is limited. Already South Australia, like other States, has an unemployment crisis, especially with the young people. Australia can't keep offering a "better life" if already there are many people living here also seeking the same!
Australia's population growth has been controlled and manipulated politically for too long. South Australia has low fertility levels, and there's no organic justification for more growth. The great majority of Australia's growth is due to net overseas migration, about 60%. We once celebrated and benefited from high growth, but now it's hurting - and time for governments to turn off the immigration tap and stop making policies for a few elite such as corporations and property developers.

Well I am most surprised! The SA Greens have actually developed the fundamentally CORRECT policy regarding population! http://greens.org.au/sa/policies/sustainable-population

This is wonderful. This is precisely what has been terribly lacking in the Australian Greens. It might have been there in writing amongst their policies but it certainly hasn’t been there in their actions.

Let’s hope that it is more than just words for the SA Greens.

I mean, how obvious is it that we need to consider population size and growth rate, and to advocate a slowing down of the growth rate if not a stabilisation of population, when there are huge problems with basic resource provision, infrastructure and services?

How absurd would it be for us to just blunder forth, as Malcolm King would have us do, with rapid population growth, when the life-support and quality-of-life support mechanisms are not in place?

I would like to thank Malcolm, yet again, for bringing this Greens policy and that of the Sustainable Population Party and Stop Population Growth Now Party to our attention here on OLO. He is certainly doing a great service for the country and for the prospects of essential political reform.

My pleasure Luddy, old mate. I certainly helped your cause in Penrith and Griffith. Who would have thunk it that the SPP candidate in Griffith actually made software for the electronic gambling industry?

Any more visits from Roy Beck and Numbers USA? Little Bindy needs his help big time.

Hey Malcolm, could you answer this question:

>> How absurd would it be for us to just blunder forth, as Malcolm King would have us do, with rapid population growth, when the life-support and quality-of-life support mechanisms are not in place? <<

And adjunct to that:

Don’t you think it might be a good idea to address the demand for resources, goods, services and infrastructure instead of forever only looking at the supply side, and to strive to balance demand and supply, instead of simply endlessly increasing supply to feed the endlessly increasing demand?

As one can see from some of the other posters, the SA greens are not the only greens with this particular wish list.
Personally I have to agree with them, and would remediate any local over population outcome, by introducing their almost exclusively preferred Euthanasia; and then selecting them as the very first conscripted candidates?
I promise you, this policy selection, would not only shrink the green ranks faster then any other policy paradigm, but quite dramatically improve the intellectual quotient of the remaining population, into the bargain?
Maybe they'd all become reds overnight, or just very red faced?
(RED, retired and extremely dangerous?) Ha, ha.
Rhrosty

The usual garbage from Malcolm King who seems unaware that South Australia is the driest state in the driest inhabited continent. Congratulations to the SA Greens for coming up with their far-sighted policy on stabilising population. Perhaps Malcolm King could drive around the state one day. Nice in the Adelaide Hills but the state is mostly flat and arid. You can grow a bit of wheat on the Eyre and Yorke Peninsulars and wine around Clare and the Barossa, but it's all pretty marginal, especially if climate change bites any harder. Did MK not notice the summer time temperatures in Adelaide? The city will be uninhabitable if this keeps up. Why is this an ideological debate anyway? Surely it's just a matter of achieving a resources/population balance. What's wrong with that? And don't tell me if they just developed the Olympic Dam things would be alright. BHP couldn't afford the diesel to remove the overlay! We've reached the end of the cheap oil era and things are different now. We're entering a time of contraction. These debates about population are increasingly anachronistic. We live in a carbon-constrained and increasingly resource-constrained world. The real issue is how we get back humanely to a population size that is sustainable in the long-term before nature does it for us - inhumanely probably.

It is surprising that the author only recently woke up to the fact that the Greens are anti-population -- besides being anti-development, science and economics illiterate. Such late awareness perhaps could be attributed to his living in the unreal world of Canberra.

"While I agree with the Federal Greens on the need for a climate change policy – although they voted with the Coalition against the emissions trading scheme - their position on many of these issues is inconsistent; in fact, it's bewildering."

Sadly, it appears that the author is seduced by Greens ideology, believing in the need for a climate change policy, despite the fact that there is no scientific nor economic justification for one.

At least he ends on a right note by referring to Sarah Hanson-Young's hypocrisy of opposing population growth but supporting opening Australia's borders to allcomers.

Malcolm/Cheryl,

You evidently think that just wanting a better life should give people entrée to Australia. It might be interesting to look at how many people would come to Australia if we had open borders.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/124028/700-million-worldwide-desire-migrate-permanently.aspx

http://www.gallup.com/poll/166796/potential-net-migration-index-declines-countries.aspx

Gallup's potential net migration index is 136% for Australia. (The number of people wanting to migrate to Australia less the number who want to permanently leave Australia is divided by Australia's total population.) This means that our population would immediately more than double if we opened our borders. Of course, if the other desirable destinations didn't open their borders too, we would get nearly all of their potential migrants as well, at least until Australia became as poor, populous, conflict ridden, and environmentally degraded as the places that people are risking their lives to escape. Why throw away our advantages of not being grossly overpopulated, having some good safety margins, and not having gaping ethnic and sectarian fracture lines in our society? Is your public relations business being paid to write this stuff?

It is amusing that you want to talk about social engineering. Isn't forcing people into high density housing (by pricing them out of anything else) when they don't want to live that way social engineering? Why is one particular immigration quota social engineering and not another?

http://www.joelkotkin.com/content/00806-city-leaders-are-love-density-most-city-dwellers-disagree

Which is worse? A Stable Population Party candidate who worked writing software for the gambling industry, but would have to quit his job and break all ties with it if elected? Or major parties that take big donations from the gambling industry and legislate accordingly? Remember how Julia Gillard broke her promise to Andrew Wilke?

Do you really expect us to believe that inadequate infrastructure that can't accommodate growth is due to universally stupid politicians? The truth is that the upfront costs of providing (non-housing) infrastructure for a new arrival are very large and won't be paid back for a very long time, so coming up with the money for it would involve some unpalatable choices. The economist Ralph Musgrave estimated 30,000 pounds (in 2008) for each new migrant to the UK.

http://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/6869.html

Hey, what do you know? I never thought I'd ever be in agreement with the greens on anything, but the only problem here is they don't go far enough.

What we need to do is excise South Australia from the Commonwealth. That way we could stop wasting WA & Queensland money, & the east coast water on the place.

As a failed state, we could preferentially accept South Ozzies as refugees, taking our entire intake from there.

Yes I know they are a greedy bunch, wanting others to pay their way, but they are angles compared to the garbage we are letting in now. Besides as we are already supporting them anyway, all we would be doing really, is moving them to more intelligent areas for settlement.

Once we have dealt with south Oz, & if we can not convince the Kiwis they need another island, we could do the same with Tasmania.

To be honest with you Luddy, the population issue in Oz is a non starter. You folks latched on to it about 40 years too late. Would have got more coverage in the 60s. Ce la vie.

My interest is the rise of far left, far right and sociobiological groups such as yours.

What your mob gets upset about is the temporary arrivals. In the last eight years, the large rise in these has provided you with a couple of 'shock horror' news stories as people don't know there's a difference between temps and perms.

Much of the anti-population commentary is simpy regurgitated from the 50s and 60s, which shows that there is nothing new under the sun.

It has always suprised me and others that your ilk are so focused like a chook on a white line on domestic consumption, when across all sectors and commodities, that is less than 30 percent of all we make, grow and import

Dear Hasbeen,

<<What we need to do is excise South Australia from the Commonwealth.>>

Shouldn't you start with the ACT?

South Australians and Tasmanians, you must admit, cost you orders of magnitude less than the ACT bureaucrat parasites and unlike the latter they at least don't give you orders in return!

Given Michael Lardelli has eloquently written about Malcolm King already I have little to add:

http://stoppopulationgrowthnow.com/Who_are_the_true_fascists.pdf

Actually I do have something to add. We who are concerned about overpopulation do repeat some of the material from the 1960s simply because it is still valid. It all comes down to, as Ethelwyn notes, a balance between resources and population, particularly natural resources such as water. Sure, you can fit more people in if the standard of living falls i.e. consumption is reduced, or if technology changes for the better (for instance, we all shifted to renewable energy)but in the end it's a matter of how many people can be fed without destroying the habitats of other species. Can we feed the 9.6 billion that the UN estimates we'll have in 2050? Possibly, but not if climate change is unmitigated and we're heading for four degrees C warming. Ross Garnaut warned we'd lose 92% of irrigated crops from the Murray-Darling Basin by the end of the century with no mitigation. There's no way we'll feed the projected 70-80 million domestic population. We won't even feed the current 23 million. And let's not forget oil that will be largely gone - shale oil notwithstanding - by mid-century. So much industrial agriculture depends on oil, it will affect food production profoundly.

I never cease to be amazed that people like the author of this essay still don`t know that Australia is already overpopulated.
Infinite growth, be it population or otherwise, is not possible and certainly not sustainable on a finite, overcrowded, and overstressed, planet.
Perhaps he should be on the first spaceship out.
Go the Sustainable Population Party!! !
The only party with some sense.

One small issue in a follow up to Popnperish. The real news story has nothing to do with population which is a furphy in Australia. Go to Africa. They'll love you there with your sterilisation track record from the 1950s and 60s.

The real story is why Sustainable Population Australia - which receives money as a charity - allowed the Stable Population Party to call itself the Sustainable Population Party.

SPA = a not for profit, advocating allegedly environmental change and anti-immigration and also accepting public tax deductable donations.

SPA = a political party funded by Dick Smith and Flight Centre CEO, whose aim is to reduce immigration.

Can you tell the difference? Probity my bum.

Yuyutsu you are of course right.

I stand corrected.

Of course population growth is a furphy in Australia, Malcolm. That is why the Australian Conservation Foundation nominated human population growth in Australia as a Key Threatening Process under the Environmental Protection Act.

http://www.acfonline.org.au/sites/default/files/resources/EPBC_nomination_22-3-10.pdf

If you read the nomination, you will see that the harm isn't just due to the direct impact of the domestic population, but also due to the damage done to produce the exports that are needed to pay for the all the imports for the domestic population. But, of course, a PR man knows far more about such things than a bunch of biologists. The people in our cities who are putting up with more crowding and congestion, inflated housing costs, skyrocketing utility bills, and other diseconomies of scale might also disagree with you, even though you try to blame it all on stupid politicians.

So far as the temporary migrants are concerned, what we talk about is net immigration (immigration - emigration), usually according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). If the temporary migrants go home, the ABS counts them as emigrants, and it doesn't count them at all if they don't stay for 12 months. Even if the temporary migrants don't stay permanently, and the vast majority want to, the impact remains if they are just replaced by other temporary migrants. Our population growth rate for the year ended June 2013 was 1.8%, enough to double our numbers in 38 and a half years.

How exactly do you expect Sustainable Population Australia to stop the Stable Population Party from changing its name to Sustainable Population Party? Liberals vs. Liberal Democrats, anyone?

As for Rhrosty, he is happy to enjoy the benefits of living in Australia, while telling the people who want to secure those same benefits for their children, grandchildren, and fellow citizens to go kill themselves. (Some of these evil people even believe that other species have a right to live too.) Wee bit hypocritical, eh, Rhrosty? I sure that there is a nice family in Somalia or Bangladesh that would love to trade places with you.

The thing we need to do, is build an inland shipping canal right though the dead centre, and end it at Lake Eyre, which would reward us by always staying full, and a then practical, transport hub.
The canal, could be a two way system, which would then be able to utilize, huge northern tides, to continually flush the system.
We should build bund walls along those parts below sea level, most of it! Then use gravity, to feed millions of miles of buried ag pipes, wrapped in high tech membrane filters, which would in turn, allow us to grow all manner of new crops, where previously none were possible, due to the fact, many plants have greater water pulling power than many pumps!
Windmills could be utilized to return the leftover highly salinated solutions? After some of it, had been used in new, cheaper than coal, thorium reactors, or geothermal heat saving heatsinks? Or light metals smelting etc?
Choosing the right crops, and utilizing the new waterway, and very rapid turn around roll on roll off transport options, would ensure exponentially expanding, returns/profit margins, and allow us to contemplate a population base as large as a sustainable 100 million.
This size of population, would enable many new industries, which need a much larger homeland population base to make them practical!
Moreover, a larger population as envisaged, would make us much more defendable.
We are not overpopulated, just under developed!
Rhrosty.

Thanks for the reply Malcolm.

But….

You have completely failed to address either of the questions I asked of you.

You’ve got to admit; these two questions sit right at the heart of the population issue.

So could you please have a go at answering them. Thanks. http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16101#279541

Could I request a fact check here? Who is saying what about what and to whom and in what way exactly?

The essay gives a list of 'GENERAL' anti-population legislative measures. Yet within the surrounding context of the essay, it's implied that these are the ACTUAL policies of both the SA Greens and the Stable Population Party.

Yet to look at both parties websites, these are NOT what either party is saying they either want, or intend, to do. Both parties reject any form of coercive population strategies.

After reading the author's sinister revelation that 'The SA Greens quietly added the new anti-population policy on its website just after Christmas', I followed the link to find ... nothing of the sort!

Oh, well ... just another day in the life of the most innuendo-smeared, mud-slung, brush-tarred party in Australia's political history - where guilt by association and implication is always the best substitute for reality.

And BTW, Malcolm, how do you know they were 'quiet' when they performed this truly sinister task of adding something to their website? Perhaps they went about it quite noisily - maybe even sang a few Christmas carols.

Great post, Killarney

Rhrosty,

I don't often agree with Pericles, but I think that he has you dead to rights (see the comments on the March 11 Social Infrastructure thread). If you had a few science degrees like me or an engineering degree, you would understand what he is saying. People come up with ideas for wonderful new technologies all of the time, but most of them end up foundering on insurmountable difficulties. When Luis Alvarez discovered muon catalyzed fusion in 1956, he believed that he had solved all of mankind's energy problems forever. Unfortunately, no one has managed to solve the problem that it takes more energy to make the muons than you get out from the fusion. I don't know if you are old enough to remember "electric power too cheap to meter" or President Nixon's War on Cancer. Cancer is still among our top 2 killers, maybe even the leading one. I lost a friend to it last year, and another dear friend appears to be dying of it this year and is suffering terribly. Why haven't we fixed it, if new technologies can solve anything?

Any new technologies need to be carefully researched and tested. There need to be pilot programs to look for unforeseen side effects, some deal-breakers. You do all that and show us a green and fertile inland Australia, and we can talk about a bigger population. In the meantime, we should accept that Australia is what demographers call a big, little country - lots of territory, but most of it uninhabitable. By managing it wisely for the future it can provide a good life for all of us here, even if it can't support a huge population. Why throw our advantages away chasing pie in the sky?

"Yep, it sucks being a realist."

A big population is not necessary to defend Australia. Look at Israel and its hostile Arab neighbours. It is technology that counts, not people lining up on the beaches. A small, rich united country will be far better placed to successfully defend itself than a large, poor divided one.

Wow Malcolm, you so keenly responded to my first post, putting up your reply less than ten minutes after I posted. Then you rather less keenly responded to my second post, putting up your reply more than three hours later… and completely not addressing my post at all.

Then you failed completely to respond to my third post.

You won’t be drawn into debating even the most basic questions about the very subject that you have again raised!!

You wrote:

<< My interest is the rise of far left, far right and sociobiological groups such as yours. >>

What a telling statement!

You seem to be completely disinterested in the actual philosophy that they are espousing or the debating thereof. Your interest seems to be entirely in building straw-man cases against these groups; in finding anything that you can use against them and blowing it out of all proportion.

This is truly extraordinary.

So how about it? Address my questions and entertain any debate they might arise out of your answers and let’s see if there is any real substance to you… or whether you are just simply all about conducting a witch-hunt of certain groups and individuals, without really understanding what it is that you are condemning in terms of their political/social/environmental message.

The SA Greens have really exceeded themselves by not only following the old 'greenwashing' strategy http://www.thenation.com/article/38036/greenwashing-nativism

but also like Cory Bernardi via ALEC, can now be linked to John Tanton's network in the USA...... as many others are in Oz, while thinking or claiming they are progressive, tolerant and socially aware.

SA used to be a really 'right on' liberal sort of place, obviously not anymore.

Andras Smith,

I suspect that the vast majority of Australians who are concerned about population growth have never heard of John Tanton. He is a 80 year old retired American ophthalmologist from Michigan who set up some immigration restictionist organisations, such as Numbers USA and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). From what I have read about him, I suspect that he is just a very old man who no doubt shares some of the prejudices of his generation, although this is what he says about his views:

"Nobody ever questions the integrity of immigrants and the domestic supporters of open immigration when they speak and act out of self-interest. The same cannot be said for the established population of the United States when, for reasons of self-interest, they call for reductions in mass immigration.

"Most Americans oppose mass immigration not because of any animosity toward immigrants, or because immigrants look different, speak different languages, or practice different religions. They oppose mass immigration because mass immigration is not in their interests. They are guilty of looking out for themselves and their own perceived interests - exactly as the immigrants and their supporters do.

"Americans oppose mass immigration because they do not see massive population growth to be in their interests. They do not see the loss of their jobs or wages to immigrants to be in their interests. They do not see the crowding of their children's schools with large numbers of kids who have language and other difficulties to be in their interests. They do not see rapid cultural and linguistic transformations of their neighborhoods to be in their interests."

http://www.johntanton.org/answering_my_critics/puppeteer.htm

You keep trying smears about John Tanton because you can't go to the Numbers USA or CIS websites and link to anything racist. In fact, there are black immigration restrictionists with links to these organisations. Presumably they are racist too.

https://www.facebook.com/BALAorg

cont'd

cont'd

Tanton also says that he is not opposed to immigration as such, only the scale of it. Even if Tanton were the evil bigot you claim, so what? He is not involved in running CIS or Numbers USA now. They stand or fall by what their current leaders do. Remember that George Washington owned slaves, and Australia's founding fathers at Federation would have all been bigots by our standards.

By the way, have you come clean about your self-interest? You haven't denied that you are a migration agent. What would it do to your profits if immigration were cut back to 70.000 a year or so?

Gee, is this post still going? Last time I looked Luddy had gone off his meds. Why is it that the anti-human league always have a crack at someones job? It's a bit like saying to a physicist who is talking about gravity "But you make atomic bombs too dontcha?"

We're not the only ones who know about Tanton. In fact, even Roy Beck is distancing himself from Tanton, who, like Col Kurtz, has gone, well 'over to the other side'. He wants to get rid of the Mexicans! Here are your true colours below:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-potok/greenwash-nativists-cynic_b_662749.html

Divergence, your El Presidente of the SPA (or is the the Stable Population Party? - same thing) put John Tanton up at her house some years ago. There are pictures of Roy Beck and William Bourke and other SPA/SPP staff smiling at the camera in the SPA newsletter. There have been secret meetings and emails going back and forth for years.

We know that Beck came out here to write Bindy's essay on population last year. Wasn't that a hoot? Your mob (aka the SPA, the SPA (political wing) and the SPGN (there's a Monty Python skit there) are up to your necks in it. You and the anti-human league are no more environmentalists than Enoch Powell or Eugene TerreBlanche was.

Generally, the commenters show how misinformed they are about the Greens' policies. This can be attributed to the void in Australia's media analysis of the Greens' policies, and is cause for alarm, as the Greens hold the balance of power in the Senate and various States/Territories.

It is in the interests of all concerned to inform themselves. Accordingly, it would be useful to read "The Greens - Policies, Reality and Consequences", the book published in 2011, comprising some 20 papers contributed by experts .

Malcolm, you’ve posted again, mentioning me… but still completely failing to address my questions.

Thankyou. You have now made your position crystal clear (not that there was any doubt beforehand):

You are just completely not interested in debating the subject, only in lambasting SPP, SPA and co, to the most utterly ridiculous extent.

Surely you must realise how this reflects on you. It would be extremely damaging to your credibility…. if you’d had any in the first place!

So what you are actually doing, which I have mentioned a few times now on OLO, is HELPING the ‘poppos’ by regularly writing articles about them on this form (and who knows where else) and making more people aware of the good work and philosophies of these organisations.

Again, I thank you for that.

The quasi religious cult of John Tanton and his network, with funding from right wing foundations, bit difficult trying to protect his reputation, appear cuddly and liberal then try promote his views on non Europeans, while appearing not to be influenced by him and use of front organisations..... and like another Social Contract Press contributor Bob Birrell has learnt, how to write ambiguously about population and immigration, just in case someone gets the wrong idea, i.e. dog whistling.

10 reasons why good people should have nothing to do with these misanthropic over population boosters from the Population and Development Program:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/127363979/Back-from-the-Brink-Ten-Reasons-to-Challenge-the-Greening-of-Hate

When both the Democrats and even the majority of Republicans know avoid these people, why can't the Greens, and anybody esle with any sense of analytical and clear thinking skills?

Andras and Malcolm King,

The Republicans and Democrats avoid *these people* because the Democrats are 95% owned by the corporates and the Republicans are 100% owned by the corporates. Although high population growth is bad for the environment, social cohesion, and the tax burden and quality of life of most Americans, the 1% love it. They get bigger domestic markets, rentier profits from ownership of residential land and other necessities, and a cheap, compliant work force that they won't even have to train if the growth is from immigration. Once the population is above the optimum, mass migration and high population growth are excellent means of siphoning a nation's wealth up to the top. The 1% are also cocooned by their wealth from most of the downside of their policies.

You and Malcolm King are using smears, insinuations, and guilt by association via tenuous links because you can't just go to the websites of the organisations you criticize and link to a racist rant or policy. You accuse them of "dog-whistling", but you never give a specific example. Nor have you explained why black people would be immigration restrictionists if it is really just all about racism. Here is another example for you

https://www.numbersusa.com/index.php?q=content/learn/issues/american-workers/congressional-testimony-how-mass-immigra.html

Personally, I would rather be called a racist than a traitor.

A physicist's views on or employment history in nuclear weapons are irrelevant to his views on gravity. It is not the same thing when someone conceals his financial interest in a debate. There is a reason why magazines have to label paid advertisements as such.

Malcolm's accusation that I don't care about the environment is a lie, just like his previous lie that I am employed by the Australian Conservation Foundation. My concern for the environment ought to be clear from my OLO posts. I also donate to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy and other environmental organisations that are not involved in the population debate. I will be happy to furnish proof of this to Graham at any time.

Yes and using the language of Birrell et al, those nasty 'global cosmopolitan elites' ... language not understood by most Australians, but another nasty stereotype, like apparently how Chinese are buying up the nation's real estate.

I have neither interest in attacking people personally on this forum, neither should they attack or smear others personally.

For those interested in keeping to objective reporting, much from the centre left of US politics, here are a few articles about SPA's fellow travellers Numbers USA;

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/06/07/739587/-The-charming-racism-of-NumbersUSA#

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/02/21/us-news-ignores-racist-ties-and-history-of-nati/192755

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/you-dont-say-republicans-admit-anti-immigrant-movement-driven-racism

http://www.splcenter.org/publications/the-nativist-lobby-three-faces-of-intolerance/numbersusa-the-grassroots-organizer

Like people are free to follow the Scientologists, I have no issue with personal choices, but if one wants to be informed, especially the Greens, I would ask wtf are you doing?

It's one thing to suspend rational analysis and clear thinking, but getting into bed with this lot is not a good look, and leaves the Greens ethically and morally vulnerable.

Andras,

Sometimes there is some truth in stereotypes. Canada is scrapping a scheme that accelerated visas for wealthy investor immigrants (see p. 22 of today's Sydney Morning Herald) because it inflated housing costs without providing the expected stimulus to the economy, since the migrants largely continued to invest at home rather than in Canada. The article refers to the work of Prof. David Ley (Geography, University of British Columbia).

"Professor Ley said his research demonstrated a high correlation between immigration and high property prices, although he said it was impossible to quantify by how much. ... Professor Ley said the debate over the impact of Chinese investment had been difficult, as those who raise this issue are sometimes accused of racism. 'It is a very effective way of stopping the conversation', he said."

See also

http://mbc.metropolis.net/assets/uploads/files/wp/1999/WP99-09.pdf

If you doubt that globalisation siphons wealth up to the top, see these graphs from the State of Working America:

Most men are receiving lower real wages now than in 1979.

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4c-change-real-hourly-wages/

Wages went up with productivity until 1972. Now, productivity is up by 240.9% since 1948, but real wages are only up on average by 107.8%.

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4u-change-total-economy/

The CEO to worker compensation ratio has gone from 20 in 1965 to 231 in 2011, coming down from a high of 411 in 2000.

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4-ceo-worker-compensation/

Nasty stereotype of the "globalist cosmopolitan elite" or the truth?

Your Southern Poverty Law Center is hardly a credible source. Here is an account of them from the Left:

“I feel that the Law Center is essentially a fraud and that it has a habit of casually labeling organizations as “hate groups.” (Which doesn’t mean that some of the groups it criticizes aren’t reprehensible.) In doing so, the SPLC shuts down debate, stifles free speech, and most of all, raises a pile of money, very little of which is used on behalf of poor people.”

http://harpers.org/blog/2010/03/hate-immigration-and-the-southern-poverty-law-center/

Malcolm - you are adding 2+2 and getting 22 when you infer a link between Sustainable Population Australia (SPA), and the Sustainable Population Party (SPP - not sure how you derive an SPA acronym from their title). As a political operative you should check the Electoral Act - only another political party can appeal to the AEC against the name, and as SPA is an NGO and not a political party such action was not open to us. QED.

Sandra Kanck
National Vice-President
Sustainable Population Australia

I fear Sandra you have had trouble with this before.

Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) is a political party and is affiliated with the Sustainable Population Party (SPA). Your Facebook page today carries a 'How To Vote' card for the SPP WA party candidate and is a direct propaganda channel for the SPP. You even have dual membership.

Personally, I'm not greatly concerned by the SPA's breach of tax regulations by also being a registered charity. 20 beards sitting around a table on a Friday night scoffing tofu and plotting revolution constitutes a public service rather than a threat.