Graham,

You are claiming that the decline in Australia is due to poor economic choices. Ezhil has claimed that the decline has occurred because we have moved away from a(n undefined) set of social values. I'd observe that societies established with the intent of conforming to a set of social values (e.g. Iran, Venezuela, Cuba) end up worse by social and economic measures against societies valuing individual freedoms.

Paul,

That example illustrates the point very well. A lot of people still picture poverty in terms of absolute deprivation, but for many families now it's a constant balancing act between rent, utilities, transport and school costs. The shoes aren’t a luxury - they’re just another unavoidable cost of getting kids through school.
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Graham,

I agree with you that housing policy sits at the centre of a lot of current financial stress. Interest rates, planning restrictions, infrastructure costs, immigration settings and construction bottlenecks have all played some role in pushing prices up. In that sense, the affordability crisis is very much a policy problem rather than some natural law.

But I’m less convinced by the argument that the underlying cultural issue is simply that society has become less Christian.

Historically, societies with strong Christian influence were not immune to corruption, exploitation or social hypocrisy. Nor is moral behaviour confined to religious societies. Plenty of highly secular societies today function with high levels of social trust and low levels of corruption.

The real issue Ezhil seems to be circling around (albeit vaguely) is the tension between material success and social cohesion. Rapid economic and technological change can improve living standards while also disrupting older moral frameworks. The question isn’t necessarily whether society needs to become more religious again, but how modern societies maintain social trust and ethical norms under very different economic and cultural conditions.

And where would your suggestions leave people who think moral and social questions should be guided by reliable evidence rather than religious authority?
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mhaze,

The point about long-term declines in absolute poverty globally is correct, but it doesn’t really address the issue being discussed here.

The question isn’t whether living standards have improved over long historical periods. They obviously have. The question is how current cost structures - particularly housing - affect lower-income households within wealthy societies today.

If rents go up a lot faster than wages, people are going to feel poorer, even if other goods get cheaper. That doesn’t contradict the long-term trend you’re pointing to. It’s just describing a different problem.

You misread what I wrote. I responded to Paul's comments about poverty. But I blamed a rich society for the rise in shamelessness.

I think you have to distinguish between systems and societies. Your list was interesting, but none of those countries was set-up to be Marxist or fundamentalist Muslim, they were taken over by people who imposed those values.

Christian societies value individual rights, but they also discriminate between good and bad. Part of our problem is that we value rights without responsibilities, and as wealthy societies we get bored with the staid and the stable and reward novelty. Once novelty becomes mainstreamed, you have a problem.

"Your list was interesting, but none of those countries was set-up to be Marxist or fundamentalist Muslim, they were taken over by people who imposed those values."

Yes, but in all of those cases the motivation for change was that the existing society was corrupted and needed a morality overhaul. There is a claim (Paul might consider it a far right conspiracy theory) that nations like Qatar and Iran have been funding universities to promote the idea of western nations as founded on exploitation, currently in a state of moral degeneration, and headed for a fall.

Having re-watched Parasite, perhaps there is no great change in morality from generation to generation, but we are forever vulnerable to the observations and assumptions made of one another.

Graham,

The relationship you're drawing between Christianity, responsibility and social stability is far more complicated than that.

Historically, Christian societies were hardly free of corruption, hypocrisy or exploitation. And today some of the most secular countries in the world also rank very highly for social trust, low corruption and civic responsibility.

That makes it difficult to argue that Christianity itself is the key ingredient holding societies together. It seems more likely that institutions, social trust and economic security play a larger role than religious belief as such.

If secular societies can sustain strong civic norms, then the explanation for "shamelessness" almost certainly lies somewhere other than declining church attendance.