The clearest article on this subject for some time. Howard's way was the wrong way even when he was Treasurer in the Fraser Ministry. His Campbell Committee laid out the path to asset value inflation which simply meant that houses became priced out of the reach of wage earners. We are gradually becoming an upstairs downstairs economy again where much of the economic activity is the poor serving the rich. We have lost industries that are essential to the production of infrastructure such as engineering shops and we import many of our needs from countries where slavery conditions exist, a case of out of sight out of mind.
We import most of components for trains, all our trucks and heavy equipment and almost all our furniture, clothing, whitegoods and entertainment hardware and software. Some economy! I hope we never again have to produce the goods to defend our country

It's odd. We seem to be able to absorb the changes around us with remarkable resilience. We seem to still be able to put food on our tables and a car or two in the garage.

A quick look at my own expenditure shows the mobile phone that soaks up $60 a month, internet costs about the same, cable TV's up there too and - oh look, there's about the same on tunnel/bridge/freeway tolls... how does it work?

But I don't yet have a big-screen TV, and I notice that according to GfK Australia, Australians bought 620,419 HD television sets in the 12 months to May this year. Wow, nearly 10% of households in only one year - that's cool.

And I have had the same car now since 1990, and I notice that new car sales haven't exactly slumped.

So, what is it that I have traded off here?

>>Many things that were once either free or very cheap are now out of reach for ordinary people. In the 1950s and 1960s it was possible for my late grandfather to take his family to a holiday by the beach at Maroochydore on Queensland's Sunshine Coast each year for the entire six weeks of the summer holidays all on the single wage of a primary school teacher.<<

Errrr... yes. I imagine that the facilities there were somewhat, shall we say, more basic than they are today? If you were to compare like with like, I'm certain that there are many "unspoilt" (read: undeveloped; uncomfortable; primitive) spots to entertain the kids and grandkids. Just so long as they can still access the Internet, that is.

I know, I know. There are many people who hate any form of progress, and wish fervently that we could live as simply (read: uncomfortably) as we did in the 50s. Or 30s. Or in good Queen Victoria's glorious reign. Or whenever - pick an era.

We are not as badly off as these whingers would like us to believe... collectively, that is; I obviously don't mean every single individual.

Down with smirk-led economics and selling off public goods (water, public land, power, telecommunications, academic independence) and the cynical preparation for a uranium-rush.

State Labor governments prevail only because they are singing the same song (lyrics by Murdoch and Fairfax, Packer et al) and breakfasting with the same property developers (APop, REIA, et al) miners, millers and financers as Smirk and Howard.

If you are not convinced, consider that the Bracks Government GAVE AWAY 20 ha of Royal Park Victoria plus $85 million to Singapore owned Australand in 2006. The infiltration by timber and paper mills of the Victorian ALP is just the tip of a phenomenal iceberg where political parties and politicians are being collected by the rich like football teams and NGO's are just scalps to hang on the corporate belt.

Australia is a Titanic trawling for more passengers and dumping its lifeboats in exchange for more tickets.

The electronic Freepress (like OLO) and www.candobetter.org and free-speakng forums like http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/roeoz are our Resistance; our one and only chance to warn our compatriots about the iceberg and keep Captain Howard-Hook, Smirking Smee and the Craven States officers from commandeering and selling off the last lifeboats and putting most of us in chains to corporate masters. We should vote for the small parties first then destabilise the Federal government by putting it last and [gag]Federal Labor second last since we HAVE to vote them somewhere due to compulsory preferential system. The smaller parties need to be more serious about winning and less serious about pleasing the mainstream press. SEQ Green Larissa Waters has used U-tube well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zI9_66qjJE New freelance commentators deserve amplification http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDhza_aMG2c and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5FA8Lv6rEg We also have to be alert for religious and pseudo-enviro parties which are really creations of the Libs and the ALP. Australia is SERIOUSLY corrupt. So Australians have to get SERIOUSLY politically committed.

This is a welcome and timely article which seems to have struck a responsive chord with many posters. The problem is that there are no published, regular, credible and authoritative competing measures of unemployment, CPI and GDP data which critics can point to. The criterion of employment as one hour paid in the last week is absurd: the German measure is 15 hours paid. The CPI is a cruel number which has little reality for most wage earners - other than to depress their real wages. GDP is, as the author states, grossly distorted by churning financial tranactions. An excellent paper on where Australia really stands is "A Fair Go for all Australians" published by ACOSS (www.acoss.org.au) which includes some devastating comparisons of Australia's perfomance compared with other OECD countries.

Runner,

In regard to the label of "Howard hater" that you wish to put on every person who is against the backward anti-social values that Howard is imposing on this society, it is John Howard, not ourselves who began the cycle of hate.

Whilst I never voted for the Liberal Party, I had considered him a well-meaning political figure with a few quaint old-fashioned ideas, that is, until after he was elected in 1996. Another person who is often also tarred with that brush, Margo Kingston, actually voted for Howard in the 1996 election out of revulsion against the Keating 'Labor' government.

However, not for the first time Howard quickly moved to betray the trust that the people of Australia had placed in him upon 'discovering' the so-called $10 billion Beazley Black hole and embarked upon the program that he had always intended to implement, that is, of vicious cuts to social spending.

One of the programs axed was the Commonwealth Dental Program which allowed poor Australians to receive basic dental checkups and treatment free every three years. Whilst this was a very modest program, and falling far short of the six monthly check-ups which are recommended it did at least save many Australians from losing their teeth.

Now the only treatment available is extraction.

With all the record budget surpluses that his Government has been able to achieve one would have thought that it would have been easy for the Commonwealth Dental Program to have been re-established.

The fact that it has not shows clearly that this Government has cut social spending not because it had to, but because it wanted to.

It would be a fitting end to John Howard if he were made to suffer, in his old age, in the same way he has deliberately made so many of his fellow Australians suffer.

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The rest of your post is completely beside the point.

James Sinnamon (author)

Runner,

No, the Howard haters are not happy with the 550 billion foreign debt time bomb his government has left us.