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.