Andrew, I dont care if someone earns more than I do; I celebrate their fortune and their harder work.

What I care about is my nine months out of work, while irresponsible politicians piss away not just our present money, but future generations as well. Out of work I find the Government supports a permanent non-working class, and a permanent enforcer class that smack me with penalties and costs for not keeping their paperwork up to date, while giving free money to parasites who eat tax instead of paying it.

And there you are, an economist who joined a party of economic lunacy and social incompetence; you turned honest by going into Parliament where you will look sane compared with your front bench.

This inequality story of yours is just party-line hate, trying to keep hold on some mocked-up moral high ground. Please try to be the adult in the room; heaven knows Labor needs one.

thats/when..our coin..was silver
then they debased it..INTO NICKLE..[it was/is..treason]

why..is it so?
THE QUEENS COIN DEBASED=TREASON.

follow....the gold reserve/PAPER..TRAIL..ukrane..had 35 ton taken
the minute..that..imf banker/president..cooped...the ukrane via.the YANK/ISRAEL..uprising

THE..MANY-HEADED..\**!**/...HYDRA
NEVER HAS..*ONLY..ONE AGENDA..power*..over others/by lie/trick/deceptION/SPIN

as you well..Would know..THE GOVT.HYDRA..IS always/trialing/testing/networking..and we..NOW..need..get right..at..the root..of/why/is..it so?

the worst\thing..is..this..'increase...of
age/and number..of those claiming privilege..
allows those exploiting..the..GOVT/CASH-COW-teats..top-up/bailout/govt underwriting..[read free govt..cash grab]..for those too rich..to ever qualify..for any other govt bailout/PENSIONS..any other way.

FOR GOVT TO expend..DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR..PENSION/TOP-up
for..THOSE WHO NEVER..by any lawful means..COULD HAVE GOT...A single govt CENT/

THAT'S JUST ELITES/public servants/bankers/lawyers...media..paying each others rent...middle class welfare..shouldn't go to giving cash upfront..to the rich/who other wise...couldn't get at one cent..its time the moneyed elite..began repaying some rent

yet they tax avoid..and now get paid to grow kids..but what about the gold the bankers on sold.for 44dollars 44 cents..its time to pay the rent..[rent..because the gold is all gone/audit the fed..its not at the fort of hard knox

but..they have got..gold colored..titanium

anyhow..the future lies..in big govt
according..to EACH/EQUALLY FAIRLY..as dividend
NOT..BY..your station/pay scale..NOT POLITICAL/economic..or military/..LIES/fears propaganda...[OPPRESSIVE-might.]

its time..to be paying for the real cost...its time for a one size pension FITS ALL...THING IS JOHN..its time to move on..bring IT TO A HEAD/..time for truth..to be heard..B..FORE/THE QUEENS/SERVANT.
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=6152&page=0#178808
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=6293&page=11

FURTHER..RE FOLLOW THE Money..[or rather/debt]
see how the bailout..of the fed..[9 billion]
then the buying..[hidden slush fund]..of 12 billion..of over engineered yanki hanger ornaments]..that are suffocating our pilots/please see only 4 could be flown..for the fly past..for our future king

think of all that f111/fly overs of times gone past
OR''THE FLY OVER..WHEN THEY FLEW OVER BRISSIE..[see promo/bris 31]
we all have paid..too much...paid in full by the same burdens.. serving the same self serving elite..its time to cut the cost of war
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwars.php
what..really is/THIS?>.us..working to death....IN JUNKto buy yanki PAPER?.. war junk.BUNKUM

http://indian.ruvr.ru/2014_04_21/Russian-Su-24-scores-off-against-the-American-USS-Donald-Cook-5786/

that is that debt..we can drop..instantly..figure it out with what you got/then inquire why every defense;procurement'..minester'ss globally is a billionaires..inquire re that onE....ENRON-SCUM

MEAN-WHILE../the govt is frontloading in.a huge burden/blowout
it can then .blame on alp..then claim to have fixed[/by working us/taxing us..to death
http://rss.infowars.com/20140423_Wed_Alex.mp3

Never known an in going government to talk down an economy like this one.
The sole purpose is to prepare the electorate to accept cuts in services, accept job losses, reduced hours, reduced pay.

You will never hear joe hockey suggest the ASX200 companies should consider reducing their record profits and hire a few more employees. You will not hear that privileged australian companies have not only fiscal and governance responsibility but they have a social responsibility to the country which has enabled their continued success. You will not hear hockey chastise tax avoidance schemes by individuals or companies that hire pools of accountants and lawyers who are solely engaged to minimise tax outlays. You will not hear hockey proposing to remove negative gearing or the introduction of a financial transaction tax to capture the booming speculation in derivatives which threaten the entire global economy.

What you will hear is that pensioners are living in luxury
The unemployed are lazy and fraudulent
Boat people are jumping queues

You will hear every distraction, every diversionary trick.

Ever since the late 1970s early 1980s the wealthy elite, the owners of corporations, those who live off the fat of the land via rents and dividends, those who contribute nothing, who elicit mining rights, government licenses, purchase privatised government assets have conducted an orchestrated strategy against the electorates in every developed country.

This has been a war by stealth, initially slow steps to undermine and contain unions, marginalise intellectuals, manage the media spin have gathered momentum.

The victory is now so inevitable that The Abbot Government has come in to power with an open declaration of war against the electorate. "The end of the age of entitlement" is not directed at the wealthy the rent/dividend receiver but the casual part time worker, the pensioner, the unemployed, the student.

There is no vision here to deal with the reality of world which needs less and less workers as industry and service becomes more and more automated. Rather, what we have here is a failure to even begin to confront the realities we face.

Good article informative Andrew. And your commentary about what Labor should do, is timely.

Unfortunately, your side includes virtually all the progressives, all three or four of them?

Some conservatives claim to be Christians, some even deeply devout? Yeah, right!
Yet few seem to be progressives, the natural stance for Christians on either side of the Isle?

We've heard the talk, now what we need is the walk, not rotary wankels, who tremble in the face of union intransigence, like poodles at a rottweiler party?

I think herding cats might be easier, than getting genuine reforms through the Labor party, and badly needed now, to grow labor's support base, or just the dropping like lead balloon, primary support.

Your main problem, seems just too many would be if they could be chiefs and not enough Indians. [Hence the demonstrable lack of cabinet confidentiality!]
And or people with real world experience.

Neville Wran i.e., had a smaller office than many junior ministers, had a very small staff, who invariably, had real world experience backing them, rather than a uni degree, or a head chock full of untried intellectual concepts, and all the complex rationality, that allowed those mad hatter ideas entry initially.

And I'm not saying that is you, but maybe a few of the other personalities; Rudders, who have turned hard right, and made Labor what it is today?

Neville Wran was the real deal, had the courage of conviction, even where that proved unpopular, and had the necessary oratory, and persuasive power to bring others with him.

If all the "wannabes" could set aside entirely unrealistic personal ambition and just crack on, perhaps you might be able to find in your ranks, another Wran, or at least one with his practical pragmatism? and engineer, and another Wran slide!?

Labor, with its left wing right wing divide, as evidenced by the replacement on the top of ticket, by a patently flawed right wing former unionist!
Is an object lesson than needs to be learned and adopted!
Otherwise Andy, just go away, join the Dodo and the Democrats!
Rhrosty.

Andrew

Egalitarianism is not about being equal or the same.

It is our Australian tradition that you socialists are trying to corrupt like you have so many of our other traditions and institutions.

Our egalitarianism holds that while we are all different in so many ways our voices and points of view are to be equally heard and respected.

Nothing more and nothing less.

You unionists don't adhere to that philosophy any more. You are all just a bunch of elitist spivs now carrying the baggage of fraudsters and crooks.

Our egalitarianism holds that while we are all different in so many ways our voices and points of view are to be equally heard and respected.

Nothing more and nothing less.

You unionists don't adhere to that philosophy any more. You are all just a bunch of elitist spivs now carrying the baggage of fraudsters and crooks.
Posted by imajulianutter, Thursday, 24 April 2014 5:17:47 PM

Union membership was 55% of the workforce back in the 1970s
Today it is 15% of the workforce

I suggest the fraud in our corporate world far exceeds anything the odd union official may succumb to. And given they have merely defrauded their own membership, for whom you fail to hide your contempt for, what point are you trying to make?

Stop watching mainstream TV and read a book or smell a flower otherwise I fear - well I shan't say.

I used to be in the Labor Party Andrew, until I found out that ordinary branch members had no collective power to do anything. I lived in a Housing Commission complex of 84 flats, and I soon realised that many people there had no intention of ever working. The economics are simple, Andrew. A person on the dole earns almost as much as a person on the minimum wage So why work? Plenty of my teenage mates went surfing every day and laughed at me for continuing my apprenticeship. They thought they were smart and that I was stupid. One of the reasons why I left the Labor Party, was because a Labor politician made a public statement that dole bludgers did not exist. I knew then that Labor, and people like yourself, do not have a clue.

After awhile I figured out how Labor works. Labor represents two classes of people. The ever growing dependent class and public service class. It is in Labor's interests to keep these two classes growing because they can be relied upon to keep voting for Labor. That is why Labor supports boat people. With 95% of Afghans unemployed after five years of living in Australia, Afghans alone are a great Labor voting bloc. With 80% of Muslims unemployed, it is no surprise that Muslim seats are critical to Labor winning office, and is the primary reason why Labor has switched from a Pro Israel stance to a pro Arab genocidal imperialist one.

The ABC supports Labor because it is a public service. The ABC supports boat people because they will become Labor voters. It's symbiotic relationship.

Labor's enemies are the productive people who pay the taxes to support Labor's electorate. So, Labor always spruikes the idea of making the rich pay more tax. What this really means is that the productive people should pay more to keep the unproductive and counter productive Labor voters happy. The problem for Labor, is that the working class has figured out that they are now "the rich" who must keep paying more to support Labor's supporters.

There is not a labor member of parliament who isn't a unionist and who at sometime stood behind the likes of williamson, thompson, the awu, or has been associated with what is about to be on display at the Royal Commission into Unions.

They are all uni educated and have only known the cloistered worlds of the union, public service or politics.

Yet they try to define and twist our tradition of egslitarinism to suit their own stupid socialist ideas. Then lwcture those if us who reject not only their policies but slso their utter incompetence.

What are you on YEbega? Besides drip feed welfare.

Lego,
this is weird, you can express my thoughts better than I. cheers for being so sober & rational

The ever widening gap between rich and poor in Australia has been happening since the 1960s, when I think we led the world in having the smallest difference between the top and the bottom. It has been happening under both Labor and Liberal administrations. It has become so entrenched that Union officials and political staffers now expect to end to end up extremely wealthy. Arthur Sinodinos made his ill-fated venture into Australian Water Holdings because he saw an opportunity to make $20 million on the backs of people paying water rates, from 50 hours work a year. Michael Williamson would not have ended up in jail if he had confined himself to his outrageous salary, courtesy of some of the lowest paid people in Australia.

The benefits to societies with flatter wealth distribution are well known, and include better outcomes in health, education and social cohesion. An interesting analysis of this phenomenon, is The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

Yes Yegg;
Obviously, people on the extreme far right, were burying their collective heads in the sand, (as usual) when engon and their (on the side of the angels) ilk was ripping billions off of the unwary!
And how many wall street bankers are cooling their heels in jail, for the GFC, they and they almost alone created?
Or conversely, how many have had their ill gotten gains, (hundreds of millions) protected by an act of congress or the lack of one, and how many now have lucrative jobs inside the US govt, as financial security advisers?
And then some blinded by the light,(brilliant BS) right wing advocate, bags unions and or unionists!
[Well it's a good diversion and popular among the extreme right or religious lunatic fringe? Not that any are posting here?]
Ponsi seems to be one of a small handful cooling his heels in prison?
But then, he made the unholy mistake of ripping off the rich!
Yes sure, one or two corrupt union officials have given the whole joint a bad name, but I can hardly find a single millionaire among them, let alone, a billionaire robber baron?
Rhrosty.

The problem is NOT Labor or Liberal, since dogma is dead, and has been since at least the Hawke government...a Labor government that espoused conservative policies, forcing the Liberals (under Howard) to promise social policies (every single one broken) to win government. Perfect role reversal.

Neither side serves political dogma, but merely use it as lip-service for the naive who still believe in dogma. Both sides serve the same masters...big business and banking...oh, and of course, they serve themselves.

We live NOT in a democracy, but a democratic aristocracy, where we elect the puppets of the puppet-masters. So any talk of left or right wing politics is the articulation of naivety.

Real wages have NOT risen the 16% quoted, since the 70's, but have remained stagnant. Calculations of CPI are moot, since under Howard the criteria for those calculations now exclude the price of housing, fuel, interest rates and a plethora of other previously considered important factors. These exclusions made those calculations look more attractive, but in no way reflect the reality. They are in short, doctored figures.

Egalitarianism is a social attitude, not a financial one. But the top 1% are certainly working hard to feather their own nests with the money of the working classes.

Yes Dick, and to think we were once the third wealthiest nation on the planet, and a creditor one at that.
Keynesian economics created a period of unprecedented prosperity.
And single income families, where one wage was enough, to buy a house, a serviceable car, and an annual holiday for the entire family etc/etc.
We had regulated banks and a gold standard!
Even Menzies Liberals stood to the left of today's Labor?
And we definitely had more personal freedoms than we enjoy today.
Our economic prosperity has been gradually wound back, by risible tea party type, economic rationalists.
Who tore down many of the very things that gave us an egalitarian society.
Like co-ops, that ensured those living and working on the land, were able to earn a living wage, at the very least.
All our essential services were publicly owned along with a bank, a communication company, and a couple of airlines etc.
We went down the privatization route, while near and vastly more pragmatic Singapore, continued with the Keynesian pragmatism, and even more public ownership.
One can only imagine how much better placed they would be, if they started with our huge resources base.
Our illustrious Leaders, simply could not think beyond privatization and or disassembling, those thing bought and paid for, by the sacrifices of former generations, or just winding back fair and equitable tax collection; and or, adding layer upon layer of costly complexity, to everything we do.
We had councils that were the principle retailers of energy, supplied at virtual cost!
We also had unpaid voluntary regional boards, who ran many things, like water boards, education and health.
And CEO's salaries simply did not exceed 30 multiples of the poorest paid on the factory or shop floor! And fair, given everyone contributes to results!
All replaced with over priced corporate cowboys and or empire building bureaucrats; and extremely expensive centralization, which does little more than create costly paper work and even more costly duplication.
We really need to return to the pragmatism and or, what worked!
If it ain't broke don't fix it!
Rhrosty.

Thanks DD for reminding me how governments manipulate the figures. Especially in relation to employment, where 1 hour a week gets you listed as employed and 20 hours a week is regarded as full-time employment. Another example of how governments shouldn't be trusted with control of information.

Anyone who thinks that Australia was in a better economic position 50 years ago, was obviously nothing more than a dirty thought between a couple of teenagers at the time.

Most people owned second hand cars and they serviced them themselves. They bought parts from car wreckers and did their own repairs. People could be seen every Sunday polishing up cars that were thirty or more years old.

Today, it is not uncommon for mom, dad, and every teenager living in a household to own a car. Car wreckers have nearly all gone broke. It is cheaper to buy a new car than repair an old bomb. Teenage girls used to look for a boyfriend with a car. Today, the girls are driving their own new Hyundais and Hondas. Drive past the local high school. Where the pushbike racks used to be, now the surrounding streets are full of cars with P plates on them.

Women yesterday were paid two thirds of a male wage for doing exactly the same work. Women could not take out a loan without a male guarantor. The unions in Broken Hill forbade married women from working at all.

The "jet set" were the sons and daughters of the rich who flew around the world to exotic places. Today, international air travel is available to anyone who can save their money. Air conditioners were for the rich. Today, most houses have air conditioners which are now too expensive to turn on because the Greens have made electricity too expensive.

Many consumer products that we take for granted today(even a telephone)were usually beyond the reach of most disadvantaged people. Today, even the kids of the "poor" have mobile phones.

Sorry, I can't agree that Australians were better off financially in the past. Australians are much more prosperous today.

I'm not saying we're not better off technologically, just that real wages haven't risen since about 1975. Google it, there's lots of graphs, admittedly mostly of American economy, but we follow them intimately.

If you can think of the price of an average item, like a meat pie that was 18 cents (with sauce) in 1975, and what you pay now, approx $3.50, that's an increase of about 2,200%...I've been in the same industry for nearly that length of time, and I'm earning about 1500% more now, than then.

The event that put more money into the average household, was women entering the workforce to a far greater capacity than previously, of just nursing, teaching, waitressing and secretarial work. And that's what was the backbone to our rising economy of the 70's and 80's, just as it's the backbone to increased incomes per household. But NOT to the perception of real wages having increased against the cost of living.

And even current figures are exaggerated by the high incomes of many specific industries that are relatively high skilled...IT, banking/finance/insurance industries, and any technology-based industries. But the AVERAGE worker has gone steadily backwards.

I read an article in the Sydney Morning Herald only in the last couple of days, stating that the American middle class are even now considered to be behind the eight-ball...for the first time in modern history.

And much of that has to do with 80% of our manufacturing going off-shore, the deregulation of banking and business, so-called "free trade agreements", and the "greed is good" ethos of the 80's giving rise to CEO's, directors and senior exec's incomes rising from 6-8 times the lowest income earner, to 200-400 times the lowest income earner.

So YES, we WERE better off, as wages kept pace with increases in production. The average worker today produces far more than he did in 1970's, but his income is not reflective of that...there are graphs of that too. So a return to the rules of the game at that period would be very welcome, but extremely unlikely.

I don't need a pile of graphs to know that you are wrong.

My take home pay as an apprentice electrician in 1970 was $16 dollars a week. That would probably equate to $160 dollar PW today. In the 1970's, union pressure (and Labor vote buying) saw apprentice wages almost triple. Employers stopped hiring apprentices because they were no longer economically viable. The stupid socialists in the Whitlam government then had to create taxpayer subsidised Quangos that would hire apprentices and then rehire them to employers.

Socialism at work.

Australia's manufacturing enterprises went to Asia because the Asians would work for much less than the Australian government declared minimum wage. The problem with Socialism in a free market world, is that if socialist governments get too greedy buying votes by screwing the productive, the productive vote with their feet and go elsewhere. Current affairs programs on TV in the 80's routinely ran stories depicting factory owners in despair over ever rising costs. Employer absenteeism was rife then, and still is today. But workers compensation claims went right through the roof as many minimum wage earners realised that conning insurance companies through lenient courts was easy. Australia Post (the PMG) was notorious for having it's workers suddenly develop soft tissue injuries, usually prior to retirement. Insurance fraud is the primary reason for the harsh "safety" laws now hamstringing what is left of Australian industry today. This "cop it sweet" on the dole mentality is still rife today, with an incredible 830,000 "Australians" now on the Disability Support Pension.

The idea that Australia was once some sort of egalitarian paradise is romantic bunk. Our egalitarian ideals were more the result of a complete rejection of the very strict class system of Britain where upward mobility by aspirational people was most definitely frowned upon. Australian egalitarianism was much more akin to US egalitarianism where upward mobility by clever aspirationals was encouraged and admired. And aspirationals did not look down at their working class parents like the tertiary educated are conditioned to do today.

LEGO, your choice to remain ignorant is yours alone, but I wouldn't advertise the fact as you have. Enjoy your bliss.

ChrisPer,

you refer to those unfortunate people who have become the “permanent non-working” as “parasites” yet I wonder if you are considerate of the massive changes in the economy, industry base, skills required, cultural and demongraphic changes of historic levels . . . etc.

. . . before making that unfair claim?

The working to poor classes in Australia have been overwhelmed by these extreme changes which were not properly dealt with by having the government assist in the changes. People were just left to fend for themselves whilst the price of land and first homes became more and more out of reach over the last few decades.

Regardless of any statistis of wage increases etc., the bottom line is that the poorer working and lower classes have gone from being able to easily purchase a family home whilst raising a family before 40 (in 1950s & 60s) to in modern day being essentially unable to purchase any land or home without wining the lotto or putting yourself through university.

Ask yourself this: why did all those poorer peoples always have jobs and manage to buy houses and have families just a few generations ago, IF as you claim, they are just bludgers and parasites who like not wotking and being poor?

Well Dick, I wrote two polite 350 word articles illustrating why you are wrong. If the best that you can throw back at me is a sneery one liner full of insults, then I must be ahead on points.

If you want people to agree to your point of view, then the onus is on you to submit a reasoned argument and at least try to counter your opponents premises. Especially when your opponents arguments were reasonable and politely put. Running out of the arena while hurling insults at your opponent is the mark of somebody who's convictions are poorly held, but who has linked his self esteem to his advocacy of his subject. Just spitting insults and jumping up and down is not the mark of a mature individual, especially on a site like this.

Try doing your homework first before you come on a site like this and start sprouting Socialist nonsense to opponents like Individual, SPQR, Spindoc and Imajulianutter. Of course, if you did your homework first, instead of parroting the slogans of the tertiary educated, Social climbing Socialists, we would not need to deprogram you anyway.

If you come on OLO thinking that you need not know your subject because us right wingers are all stupid, because your tertiary educated peers say it is so, then we are going to cream you every time.

LEGO, you didn't illustrate anything other than your right-wing ranting, and in the opening of your post previous to my "one-liner" opened with "I don't need to look...". A statement of the choice of ignorance. Not an insult, but a fact. If you're insulted by facts, then keep hiding your head under your right wing.
You then get into a rant of socialism, again demonstrating your inability to comprehend what you read, or again, your choice to ignore what was said. I'm not a socialist, or any "ist", since I'm apolitical. So both of your ill-informed rants were meaningless. Take some of your own advice, and READ what is said, comprehend, even ask questions of clarification. But off-topic rants do you no service, and only point towards the soap-box you stand upon. You addressed absolutely nothing of what I said.

And if you think the quality of discourse at this forum is so high, then think again...it's mostly parochial ranting by the puerile. I just pop in while another forum I attend is slow...out of boredom. So your opinion means less than nothing to me

Lego>> Anyone who thinks that Australia was in a better economic position 50 years ago, was obviously nothing more than a dirty thought between a couple of teenagers at the time./Sorry, I can't agree that Australians were better off financially in the past. Australians are much more prosperous today.<<

Err.... Lego my name is dirty thought and I am 50 years old....but I can read statistics....here are some:

In 1970 Australian household savings were 39% of GDP
In 2013 Australian household savings were 22% of GDP
In 1970 Australian household debt was 43% of GDP
In 2013 Australian household debt was 163% of GDP

Lego old mate, that Dastardly bloke (wasn’t he a cartoon character?) has a factual point...we have the modern devices...but we are poorer....and getting poorer.....the banks are the only winners.

While I am on banks I will take the opportunity to laugh audiably (once again)at Shadow Ministers ongoing and proposterous claim that the banks make 1.5% gross profit

Lego this link gives a snapshot of how all economic indicators are going in the wrong direction.
http://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2012/mar/pdf/bu-0312-2.pdf

Oh Lego, you have made my day. Referring to yourself as polite!

Which one is that, Dick? Me and the boys will come over and liven things up for you. Pacifying pacifists, deprograming social climbing socialists, and making chardonnay sucking elites choke on their own contradictions is our specialty.

Not Debate & Relate, I hope. Things went pear shaped on that site when the lefties took over running the page, and the site went from a debate site to a stonewalling site. And not Newmatilda either. I got chucked off that site after only three posts. If there is one thing that lefties like you don't tolerate, it is a difference of opinion.

sonofgloin, old mate. How you equate that Australians prefer to spend their money instead of saving it, equates to us being poorer, is beyond me.

Being spendthrifts over being savers is indicative of a contented and profligate people who have little concern for the future. I am 62, and anybody who tries to tell me that we are poorer today than 50 years ago, I know needs his or her head read. Where you get this socialist crap from, I simply do not know. But you probably got it from some lefty publication. My answer to that stupidity, is the old American retort "Hell, I was there."

Dick claimed that he could prove that Australians are poorer by comparing meat pie prices. For all I know, meat pies may be more expensive today, I just don't know. But in the past, a meat pie was just a meat pie. We sure as hell did not have meat pies with mushrooms, meat pies with bacon, meat pies with cheese, and everything else you can buy down the supermarket today. As matter of fact, even large supermarkets of yesterday were probably less than half the size of what they are today.

Consumer products are infinitely cheaper today. Second hand cars used to be so expensive that they were a real family investment that only working adults could afford, and people looked after them for decades. Cars like Hillman Imps, Mini Minors, and EH holdens were very basic cars with no add ons like heaters, demisters, blinkers (using blinkers to turn was illegal) or AM radios. Today, even girls can afford new cars with air conditioning, power steering, ABS brakes, GPS navigation,and CD players.

Transistor radios were very expensive.(and big) Today, even toys for small children can come with a radio set. The thing that you do not understand, because you have been conned by devious people, is that luxury items which were once the consumer goods that only the rich could afford, are now cheap enough to be owned by ordinary people.

Lego>> Where you get this socialist crap from, I simply do not know.<<

Sadly Lego that is not all you do not know.

What socialist crap Lego, given you deem me a socialist. In particular what socialist crap do you glean from my post?

It was a very short post and easy to comprehend. But for your sake my fellow interlocutor I will couch the post in terms that you can grasp..... I will repeat and simplify the previous post for you sport.

Point 1: 40 years ago the average Aussie household had twice the cash savings in the bank compared to today.
Point 2: 40 years ago the average Aussie household had ONE QUARTER of the debt to financial institutions than it is shackled to in 2014.

Lego these numbers and many more like them are to be found at Government web sites, such as the one I previously posted.

Lego you are no dill....but given the Aussie of today have less than half the savings.....and FOUR times the debt of their equal in 1970, anybody with the sense to put pants on in the morning can extrapolate that the majority of Aussies are one pay cheque away from life changing personal disaster.

As I have said I am not a follower of the Ashkenazi originated socialist system. Nor am I a fan of the Ashkenazi originated capitalist system in its present form.

The banks have gone from being an instrument to fund and to facilitate transaction procedures for private enterprise and national infrastructure projects to owning 40% of the globes assets and reaping 60% of global corporate profits.......From slave to master..

Just because you do not comprehend the enormity of our enslavement to a handful of bankers and I do...that does not make me a socialist sport!

Lego,
you have outlined as nobody else has, the differences of living well within our means, and or, greatly exceeding them, based largely on several false premises? i.e., more unaffordable housing adds to actual disposable wealth.
Yes the bike racks are empty, so are the school sporting Fields, and too many are waddling to the car park on their way home?
All the alleged improvements have been purchased with record domestic and foreign debt; or, the fire sale of the wealth of generations yet unborn?
The middle class is a disappearing class. and the gap between the haves and have nots is an exponentially widening one!
And the rising debt has created a (false) sense of security, or an economy awash with real money!
A MacMansion and a two car garage doesn't necessarily mean more actual wealth. Just much bigger mortgages, bigger insurance and rates bills, and or hire purchase agreements you could paper the walls with!?
And there are too many self-deluded fools, who see something better in this lifestyle, where both partners work too many hours, to the point, where the only possible destination is the divorce courts, bankruptcy, and or years spent trying to reduce a massive personal debt burden.
It's not wealth, but rather the emperor's new clothes, or an economy, that resembles a warm and comfortable frog, being slowing brought to the boil and lethal consequences!?
We probably will have another depression, and people who have had it too easy for too long, will not be able to cope or adapt, and consequently spend what remains of their lives, becoming even more bitter and twisted, or blame-shifting fools?
Every western style economy rests on just two support pillars, energy and capital!
Not only do we pay far too much for both, but we have placed both in the hands of whiteanting foreigners, who have no national patriotism whatsoever, just eyes glued in an almost maniacal fashion, to a bottom line, which must always grow, come what may!
Ah for the days of ethical business, ethical regulation, where any profit was a good profit!
Rhrosty.

Graham perhaps needs add "Thumbs Up" and "Thumbs Down"
with counters....

Sadly without "Thumbs Up" and "Thumbs Down" here is not so easy to work towards some agreement on what to do...

Else how can we agree on changes for the better of al

This article in today's guardian is right on topic:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/27/thomas-piketty-economist-american-dream