Daggett

Your argument rests on the presumption that most people are worse off as a result of Labor and Liberal economic policies. It is not a sign of callousness or indifference on my part to point out that this is not the case. As we have discussed exhaustively on another thread, it is possible to acknowledge that some people are suffering poor or falling living standards without leaping to the conclusion that this is the experience of the majority.

I support the economic reforms implemented under Labor and Liberal governments in the past 20+ years BECAUSE I believe that most people - especially those at the margins and on lower incomes - are better off as a result. That goes both for relatively narrow economic measures of living standards such as real wages, and broader quality of life measures such as health, travel, education etc. I also disagree with the policies you advocate BECAUSE I’m convinced we’d have far worse living standards and a far worse quality of life more broadly defined under the statist economic nationalism that you espouse.

It is moral vanity to presume that you are more compassionate than those whose opinions differ from yours.

The difference between us is not which one of us cares most about the quality of life of average Australians, but our opinions of how we best secure it.

Rhian wrote, "Your argument rests on the presumption that most people are worse off as a result of Labor and Liberal economic policies."

No it does not.

Read again http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6326#92953

Whilst I believe that most people are worse off and that this was the experience of most of those posting to the forum, my central argument is that much of the degradation in the quality of life and increase in living standards have not been properly taken into account in inflation and GDP figures. This is my experience and the experience of most of those posting to that forum (Sorry about the broken link further above.)

And even if it is true that our material living standards are rising, is it acceptable that this is occurring at a cost of the degradation of the life support system upon which our whole economy is ultimately dependant? I note that you have not even attempted to tackle that one and Yabby, your partner in obfuscation, on that forum actually agrees with me that the environment is going down the toilet. He just rationalises that nothing can be done, so we should just go on with business as usual.

Assuming that both of you understand that we can't have an economy without an environment then most surely accept that our living standards are destined to nosedive, even if you maintain that they are improving now.

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Tristan, you make some valid points about the Greens. I just wish they would grasp how important the choice between Labor and Liberal is instead of just spouting the simplistic nonsense that Labor and Liberal are like "Tweedledum and Tweedeldee". They have every right, indeed, even a duty, to be harshly critical of Labor, but they are doing the Australian electorate an enormous disservice by being so apparently complacent about the prospect of the Howard Government being re-elected.

They should be telling the public in no uncertain terms that any Government which is prepared to squander AU$1billion of taxpayers money in just one term in lying self-promotional advertising should be resoundingly thrown out.

James Sinnamon (author)

"He just rationalises that nothing can be done, so we should just go on with business as usual."

Daggett, perhaps you missed the main point that I was trying to
get across, or I explained it badly, so I will try again:

Its fairly pointless for you to suck your proverbial thumb in
the corner and promote ideas that would bankrupt the Australian
economy, if they achieve little more then as a feegood exercise.

Like I pointed out, if Australians and Australia vanished off the
global map tomorrow, nothing much would change, when it comes
to the megaproblems facing humanity.

So its going to take megasolutions, not shooting yourself in
the proverbial foot, as solutions.

Perhaps some new technology will come out of the race thats happening
in Silicon Valley, to find energy solutions. We'll see. Nobody is
even addressing another yearly 80 million a year in global population
increase. But these are global problems, not just feelgood exercises
to cheer you up for the day

Daggett

Falling living standards are (or were) central to your hypothesis. You wrote:

“If the ABS inflation figures were to comprehensively measure these costs, and attach monetary values to the various ways in which the quality of life for many has declined, the “real wages” figures would probably reveal a substantial drop in the actual standard of living of most Australians and a massive drop for many on the lower end of the income spectrum.”

Some measures of environmental health and quality are deteriorating, others are improving.

According to the latest State of the Environment Report, on the positive side, land clearing is down, we have good urban air quality, recycling is increasing, the hole in the ozone layer is diminishing, the area of land and water under formal protection is growing, and per capita greenhouse gas emissions are falling.

Negative indicators include: total greenhouse gas emissions are still rising slowly, biodiversity is deteriorating, southern wetland qualities are poor and the proportion of overfished fish stocks is rising.
http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2006/publications/report/pubs/soe-2006-report.pdf

I don’t deny we have real and serious environmental problems that must be addressed, but I expect I disagree with you about their causes and solutions.

Most of our most severe problems, such as dry land salinity or overuse of the Murray-Darling system, are a consequence of decades of wilful or ignorant misuse of resources, not a product of the relatively recent “neoliberalism” of Labor or Liberals. Indeed, most of it is down to dumb decisions by governments, not the private corporations you so despise. Governments gave us the cane toad, compulsory land clearance and the Snowy River scheme, for example – all the kind of grandiose statism you seem to admire.

We are devoting an increasing proportion of our resources to environmental monitoring and protection, a trend I fully support. We will need to do more about greenhouse in future, and this is starting to happen. In short, it’s far better and easier to address these problems meaningfully in a prosperous society with a robust and flexible economy than return to the failed dirigiste policies of the past.

Except Yabby you're yet to prove that the poster's ideas will bankrupt Australia. The fact is that there are plenty of European economies that adopt high taxes and high levels of government-provided services that are doing quite well, and from all accounts are thoroughly pleasant places to live in, where the citizens are generally happy to continue voting in governments promising more of the same (and yes I know Sweden and France have recently voted in more "conservative" governments - but the ALP is a good deal more conservative than Sweden's current ruling government).
OTOH, what I see in America, where successive governments have moved further and further in the extreme economically "conservative" direction, is a country with extreme wealth disparities, a barely manageable foreign debt, a dying manufacturing sector, a free-falling housing market, a broken health system, etc. etc. It concerns me far more that Australia is headed in such a direction than the possibility that it might end up like Sweden or Denmark, even if the latter means half my paycheque goes towards providing government services. Fortunately I don't believe the people of Australia are going to let it happen.

Why is it that all the posters here seem to follow the mantra that our lot must always be getting better? In the long run we are living far beyond our means and sooner rather than later the inevitable depression will come along to destroy that myth.
The current philosophy seems to be "Eat, drink and be merry", forgetting what comes after.

David