As I have sufficient funds if I am frugal I won't be applying for the dole. However, I will be doing it tough for a while.

As I won't appear on any government stat - my current unemployed status will go unnoticed. I anticipate finding work. I have excellent marketable skills.

I merely made a post because I thought it pertinent to the thread. I had no idea it meant that I was opening myself to insult and abuse. Guess I am naive that way. I merely wanted to illustrate the point the bad things can happen to good people regardless of our best made plans.

I am 'doing it tough' right now, of course I am not expecting charity but to receive a vitriolic diatribe simply because I view life differently to someone else serves to illustrate the ignorance and arrogance of posters like Col Rouge.

I will continue to post here. I have equal rights to you Col - get over it.

On ya Trinity, and hope you find a great job soon. Have been in that doldrum and it's awful, both on the purse and the self-esteem. If you interview as well as you post, you'll be going places soon. Good luck.

Now i suspect that none of the posters here drive a Toorak Tractor (now that could start a whole new thread couldn't it!.) But hey! I've just got my tax return and mentally spent it 3 times over! Shall narrow it down to ME, ME and ME! Thank you Mr Treasurer!

Di - thank you so much. I really needed that. Self esteem is a bit shaky right now. However, if you like my posts fan-bloody-tastic - I present pretty well too. BTW - my real name is Dianne. I feel all chatty and not at all topic related except to say that there are people who are doing it tough and they go unnoticed by the big end of town due to the methods of our statistical collection eg 2 hours work per week and you're considered employed! Wot utter rot!

I have been grappling with the whole concept of affluenza and wonder what sort of world my children are growing up in. All the McMansions being built to house smaller families and the costs (both financial and environmental) of running these places appal me. The masses of advertising we are subjected to that tells us to consume more and pay later. Is this what our booming economy is based on? Surely there are limits to growth but a lack of growth is portrayed as bad as far as economics is concerned. How can our planet absorb all the waste we create, where do all the large whitegoods and computer monitors go? I also want my kids to find more fun things to do than watch a monitor or go to the mall.

Some comon points emerge from the comments i have read on the topic. One is the acknowledgement of the phenoomenon. The second is a hopelessness to fight the predisposition to consumer and be judged by what we consume,while, at the same time, an expression of self-disgust at our impotence to control the urge to consume. the last one is the absence of any obvious desire to address the phenonomenon, head-on.
Is affluence really a new disease for Australia? Or, is the disease, the scale of its manifestation which has undergone a quantum jump in the last thirty or so years?
The use of the term disease implies adverse consequences for us individually or collectively. Hence, if the phenomenon is really a disease, perhaps we owe it to ourselves to be clear about our understanding of it, including its roots and the implications for us.
Perhaps, if we were to probe deeper into the matter we may find that we are dealing with social dynamics of phenomenal proportions which, unknowingly, we, each and every one of us, contribute to, in the way we function and in our interests, pursuits and priorities. Perhpas we may also find that, in our indivdualistic existence we are powerless to understand and deal with phenomena which can only be addressed collectively.
Two questions. Is affluence an isolated feature of today's existence, or simply another feature of existence whose origin is rooted in today's social arrangements, phlosophies of existence and modes of functioning, which dominate life today, so much so that we have no spare time and other resource to address the quitessential aspects of human existence? Is the phenomenon likely to go away as we progress deeper and faster into individualism?