“There’s a very good chance we’ll never get to a point where we need to set a limit.”

But Rhian you didn’t disagree with my previous statement; “I guess you can see that Sydney is overcrowded and that further growth is pretty silly. Presumably you can appreciate some of the problems being caused by rapid pop growth in southeast Queensland….”

So if you can see that a limit is appropriate in Sydney and elsewhere, for obvious reasons, then why wouldn’t the concept hold for the whole country?

Even the most pro-growth people can see that population limits are necessary on small islands. This applies with the Townsville City Council in relation to Magnetic I, and with other north Queensland councils, which are pretty much rampantly pro-expansionist.

If we even suspect that our resource base is anything other than sustainable, then one of the first things we should do is stop increasing the pressure on it……surely!

In SEQ, there is a great push for people to reduce their water usage. But no attempt to stop the increasing number of people!

Across the country, there has been a concerted effort for people to get into recycling or to think twice about what they are buying, in order to reduce consumption and waste production. But no attempt at all to stop the number of consumers and waste producers from rapidly increasing!

We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So the push is on for everyone to do their bit… while the government continues on its merry path of increasing the number of fossil fuel consumers!

It is all just utterly schizophrenic!

Our society/government can see the need for sustainability or frugality, while at the same time condoning continuously increasing pressure on these resources, the very same resources that we are trying to protect by appealing to the individual to reduce his/her consumption!!

Can it get crazier than that?

The CPI does not include the cost of interest (think of those big housing loans). It includes building costs, which have not increased much in real terms over the past thirty years, but not the cost of the land the house is built on or the cost of purchasing established houses. It allows the sharply rising costs of health care, staple foods, and other necessities to be concealed by the falling prices of new cars and consumer electrical goods. A plasma television might cost $3,000 instead of $12,000, but a low income family still cannot afford one. This is explained in layman's terms in a Sept. 2006 Greens paper 'Let them eat cake: how low income earners are disadvantaged by the CPI' by Richard Denniss.

Rhian needs to apply a reality check to the idea that quality of life has improved. How do people benefit from now needing a 50 year mortgage, or from losing their garden, or from having their neighbours encouraged to report them for hosing their cars or windows off? How do we benefit from a slower journey to work due to the additional traffic and blockages because of roadwork or because someone has had a breakdown or accident? How do exhausted mothers of small children benefit from working all day and then coming home to the lion's share of the housework? If people just love living closer and closer together, why has the state government in NSW (and probably elsewhere as well) had to take planning powers away from local councils to ram through higher densities?

I haven't seen the figures for Australia - yet, but in the US, where they have also had mass migration, the median wage is essentially the same in real terms as it was in 1973, and the people at the bottom have been going backwards (see State of Working American graphs at Economic Policy Institute, www.epinet.org). All of the benefits of economic growth have gone to the folk at the top. Alan Greenspan, the head of the Reserve Bank, actually said that immigration was valuable for keeping wages low.

Ludwig, we can debate endlessly whether quality of life has improved because it is subjective and not quantifiable. But you asked, “Have real wages gone up in recent years? Has our purchasing power increased”. On these indicators there is credible, independent, verifiable information. As you now appear to accept, the evidence is unequivocal – they have improved. The 43% growth in real per capital consumption doesn’t seem over the top to me. As I said, you’re welcome to check my sources and methods and dispute them.

It is simply not credible that average spending could increase so fast but “ordinary” people see spending fall.

When quoting growth in consumption and population I wasn’t implying a causal relationship, just showing that spending had grown much faster than population and therefore per capita spending has risen, to refute your point that “per-capita economic turnover just simply isn’t increasing,” which is clearly wrong.

The point about “dodgy economic principles” is also mostly wrong. GDP as a measure of economic welfare counts as pluses a few things most of us would count as minuses, such as the cost of cleaning up pollution or fighting crime. That’s why I quoted real consumption per capita not GDP per capita, as consumption is a much better measure of spending on things people actually want, and is generally accepted as the best single measure of economic welfare. Not perfect, I’ll grant, but I defy you to name a better one.

I’m the only person arguing against population controls in this forum, so can’t respond to every point. Don’t take silence as consent. I don’t agree that Sydney is overcrowded, though I would agree its government has done a woeful job of providing the infrastructure and services its population needs.

Divergence, you’re right that the CPI no longer counts interest costs as part of the basket of expenses, and if it did, inflation would be a little higher. But not enough to change the basic picture I described.

kartiya jim, I said I’m UNcomfortable with command and control policies, and that would certainly include the one child policy.

Rhian

Would you care to respond directly to the “schizophrenic” points I made.

How does the strong push to reduce per-capita consumption of various stressed resources sit with the push for or acceptance of a continuously increasing number of consumers?

I do find it very strange that you would consider Sydney not to be overcrowded, and presumably capable of taking limitless growth.

Ludwig, I didn’t say I think Sydney is capable of limitless growth, just that its problems are caused by bad government not overpopulation. The alternatives you pose of a bureaucratically-mandated population policy and “limitless growth” are a false dichotomy which I have said repeatedly I do not accept.

You identify the core value of sustainability as frugality, I identify it as efficiency – making better use of resources, encouraging innovation to replace technologies and processes that are intensive users of scarce or polluting resources, and shifting further towards growth in living standards through ideas, services and technology. This means we can raise living standards sustainably. The task to me look pretty much the same whether Australia’s population in 30 years time is 30 million or 40 million.

Sustainability to me is much more about how we do things, than how many of us do it.

Rhian,

You accept that the CPI does not include interest, but have said nothing about the fact that the CPI does not include urban land prices either, whether on their own or as part of the cost of an established house. Even if you resist the idea that housing affordability is strongly related to population growth, these costs must still be paid. The growth in house prices in Sydney from 3 to 9-10 times the median wage for a modest house would have to wipe out most of the gains that you claim.

How will increasing Sydney's population make life better for the current inhabitants? What will they have then that they don't have now? Here is a letter to the Adelaide Advertiser:

DON Bursill may believe that Adelaide has sufficient water supplies to enable it to double its population ("City has water for growth”, 23/10), but the question surely must be: how will having 2 million neighbours make my life in Adelaide better? I will have less water, more traffic, more crowded beaches and so on – in general, less of what I need and more of what I don’t want. There is no plan behind increasing Adelaide’s population – just growth for growth’s sake and sod the inhabitants.
Michael Lardelli
Prospect, SA

You might also read up on some of the past societies that collapsed. Technologies don't always come along just because they are needed. Unlike the days of the Green Revolution we are now in trouble on a number of fronts, and, very often, the obvious solution to problem A is likely to make problem B worse.