Yesterday I bumped into a young couple shopping in the supermarket. He was ponting out to his wife/partner the increase in price and decrease in content size of a shelf item.

We entered into a discussion based upon inflationary trends and the way the world was changing. He did say that his father, who grew up in England during the war years, often spoke about his restricted diet during those years in which he had no option but to eat horse-meat and was only too pleased to be able to get a bread and dripping sandwich as a meal.....this at the time the young fellow said he found hard to believe!

After listening to this young chap for a while I did remark that I myself could verify the truth of the situation as I had been fortunate enough to survive those very lean times in England and remember when one could purchase a quarter of a pound of lollies for 5 pence and a big bottle of soft drink was 7 pence with 3 pence refund on the bottle! .....I continued by saying that I was only too appreciative of the fact that I had lived through the 50`s and the 60`s in Queensland ( which I now believe was as close to Paradise as one will ever get!) and felt really sorry for the youngsters of today who will never ever be given the chance to live or appreciate those wonderful times when there was full employment, fuel was 31 cents (equiv) a gallon, and we had a friendly, relatively crime-free society. People would help each other and moral principles reigned supreme,...People knew and accepted the difference between right and wrong and took the punishment meted out if stepping over the line....THIS WAS A HAPPY SOCIETY!

Where have we gone wrong?...... if only we could return to those good old days before Television and before the inception of this national occupation of greed for more and more?

The good old days eh ? Yes perhaps there were many advantages 50 or 60 years ago. I too was brought up during the war years but I remember my mother saved every paper bag and every piece of string. Presents as well as chips came wrapped in newspaper and I remember sitting down to a plate of mashed potatoes grown by my father because there was nothing else to eat. We picked blackberries from hedgerows and mushrooms from fields. I had never tasted a banana until after the war.
If you were ill you paid to go to the doctor who was unable to give you drugs now available. Dentists drilled your teeth with something driven by a venetian blind chord with no anaesthetic. No Television, fridges, washing machines, computers, toasters, mobile phones,microwaves, dishwashers, airconditioning, cars were primitive compared to today's, no recorded music apart from 78rpm records, Hospital treatment was also primitive compared with today's advances particularly in the operating theatre and you usually had to pay for it.
Yes, in some respects we were healthier, because we didn't overeat, we cycled everywhere, we actually pushed lawn mowers and we didn't jump in a car to go to the local shop, we walked up stairs and didn't take lifts and we didn't have remote controls for everything.

Were we happier ? In some respects we were, but I for one would prefer not to go back to those days as I am happier living in today's world in spite of the drugs, crime, pollution and terrorism, Sixty or seventy years ago we had our worries, but they were just different worries then, particularly the risks of war and all the devastation that brought. As for working conditions, the present generation doesn't know how well off they are now...... fancy cutting cane by hand or digging coal by hand ?

False advertising.

The starting contribution says nothing about "where we are heading", only about "where some of us have been".

The world is so completely different today, from transport, through entertainment, to mobile phones, the internet and beyond, that it is utterly pointless to compare the experiences.

Different planets.

I agree with Pericles on this.
If there's something about today you don't like, don't waste time mooning over the supposed "good old days", get up and work for the "good new days", make it happen! That, in my humble opinion, is what our parents and grandparents did, and we stand today among the fruits of their efforts, as our descendants will stand among the fruits of OURS. It's up to all of us to determine what they'll be.
Hindsight is always rosier than the harsh realities.

Greed is right Cuphandle. Advertising and corporatism targets gullible people with spurious ideas that consumption and spending will make you happy and that if we make big business rich and omnipotent then we will all be better off. Local businesses and communities have been decimated. The vast majority labour under despots and bullies in faceless and impersonal corperations that care for nothing but their own profits and growth. No wonder the wage slaves excessively use drugs and alcohol to escape their misery. Another opening for the greedy capitalists.

We live in times of shallow bountifulness where soft drinks, chips and fast food are no longer treats but everyday items and wonder why we are getting sick and no longer appreciate the good things in life. Humans need some hardship. Without the bad you cant really appreciate the good.

Dear Cuphandle,
Where are we heading . Up the creek without a paddle.
I do a bit of web serfing and people who are much more articulate with words then I am say Obama is leading us into slavery to big business and the banks by not doing the hard yards to stop greed and paying off the debt but postponing the enevitable and bribing us with a stimulus package. I don't care what people think but there are no free lunches.

Why ask "Where are we heading", doesn't everyone know the answer, that we are not heading anywhere?

One day, our human body will no longer accommodate us.
One day, the whole human race would be a gone episode.
- and however the future unfolds, this is still going to be true.

We do not have a future - but we do have a present, and we can make use of this present to complete things, so that when our time comes, our life will be truly complete and we will not be missing anything.

The issue is not about which is better - such as more technology or less technology: We are born into a given world, which at the time is the only world we know and we set out to complete and fulfil our experience of it based on our early impressions. Instead, the issue is about change and when do we finally declare: "enough is enough!", because the faster this world changes, the harder it is for us to complete anything, so we are left with so many loose ends, so many open cycles, so much unfinished business, that we end up in a mess.

This world cannot be made better forever - it will come to a close. The question for us is how we can end it gracefully rather than frantically, both as individuals and as a whole society.

From Roman texts to Greek writings to Mesopatamian records we know that the elderly have always claimed that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and that the youth are out of control.

I expect that the reason we look backwards to a world that seems rosier is that its a time when most of us were full of hope and eagerness ourselves:- our dreams lay shiny and bright in front of us, we were in love or felt loved by parents and/or family and, considering we were bulletproof, were unaware of the dangers all around us.

The unromantic, pedestrian lives many of us were destined to live hadn't blunted our enjoyment or anticipation.

I cannot think that the 40's (world war 2),50's (Korean War), 60's (Vietname war), Wide Boys, Teddy Boys, Mods & Rockers, Klanners, gangs, Mafia, The Berlin Wall, Castro, The Cold War etc. etc. were viewed with any more approval by the old folk than are these days. I certainly never heard my own parents claiming those were the Golden Ages.

Where are we headed? Well since those times we have eradicated the epidemics of diptheria and polio that decimated the First World at least. Infant mortality rates have gone up, education is regarded as a right and not a privilege, standards of hygiene have improved, the streets are cleaner, and living standards that were considered permissible for the lower echelons are now condemned as slums. I think we're headed towards a cure for cancer at least!

We live healthier lives for longer too. So I reckon we're also headed for a longer period of looking around us and asserting that the collapse of the sky upon our old gray heads is imminent!

Given the exponential affects of global-warming and the current geo-political situation, I can't help but wonder if, by the time the bill comes in for these massive debts, the restaurant may well be shut, and it's customers rubbing sticks together somewhere dark and damp!

Is there someone out there who can explain to me logically, exactly where ALL the "lost", "missing" money has gone to.

We see the Banks and some very big companies being given a monstrous hand-out across the world,....hand-outs of Taxpayers money, and inevitably it is the Taxpayers who will have to repay this money to these governments in the way of increased taxes and increased costs of consumer goods!

Can someone convince me that we are not just victims in the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the innocent victims of a Capitalist society way, way out of control?

While we are on this subject of missing money, ....is there anyone out there who knows exactly what happened to the proceeds of the money derived from the sell-off of two thirds of Australia`s Gold Reserves by the then government of Paul Keating?

Maybe I am just dumb and ignorant, but if I am, then so are the majority of Australian citizens who do not seem to know where the "missing" money has gone to!

It's really quite simple, Cuphandle

>>Is there someone out there who can explain to me logically, exactly where ALL the "lost", "missing" money has gone to.<<

It never existed.

If you recall the starting-point of the current financial meltdown, it was the "bad loans".

If you lend me $1,000, and I promise to pay 5% interest, that loan has a "value" of $50 a year, over and above the grand itself.

You might decide that you want to cash the loan, but instead of asking me to repay it, you sell it to Maximillion, who is looking for a nice safe $50p.a. earner. He's happy, with a steady income from my loan, you're happy because you have your capital back.

If I continue to honour the debt, continue to pay the interest, all is well with the world.

Unfortunately, these folk could not afford the repayments.

Meanwhile the Banks had simply invented a value for them. They parcelled them up into bundles, gave them a Triple-A rating, and traded them between themselves.

The "money" itself never came into being, it was entirely fictitious.

Unfortunately, these loan parcels continued to be bought and sold. Pension funds were stuffed full of them. Companies bought them as "securities". And money was borrowed against them by ordinary folk, who went out and spent it... money that didn't exist in the first place.

Back at first base, the borrowers were defaulting, giving the loan a value of whatever the security (the home) happened to be. Which was heading south at a massive rate of knots, thanks to the sheer number of these little schemes that were unwinding.

There's a bit more to it, in the form of other dodgy financial instruments that compounded the problem.

But the key is that the "money" itself never existed.

Unfortunately, now that the pyramid has tumbled, the money needs to be created in order to fill up the hole.

Hence all these plans to print "real" money, which is just another way of borrowing, and give it to us to spend.

Cuphandle
The world seems to go in cycles of excesses. Greed and excess is what bought down the Roman Empire and French royal family. The upper echelons can only get away with so much before the system crashes which is what we are witnessing now with the GFC.

Satyajit Das on ABC's Q&A last night spoke of a need rethink the current growth models when talking about managing economies. The Greed is Good mantra is being derided now that the inevitable consequences are for all to see.

There is some hope that the greed cycle will diminish but it will only happen with both the government and private sector on board. I don't think the private sector will go quietly but with some well-targetted regulation that won't strangle enterprise we may just see a better and more positive future ahead.

i too am sick of the good old days , that 7 pence bottle of pop was paid for in sterling silver, if you equate the price back into the price of silver the price has stayed the same

its only because our coin-age turned from silver to nickle and we cash in legal fiat tender for fake cupro nickle/silver coin ,that the golden age was stolen by the bankers who run the fed reserve [and stole our gold and silver [the only constitutionally legally tender]

much fraud has happend [your home is still worth the same in the pounds of silver it was worth when your parents bought it for real silver, because the price of silver in legal tender inflated [not the value of it]

see that even copper coin cost 4 cents for the copper in a one cent piece ,[thats why they got rid of copper coin[see the real price of copper is reflected by buying a 2 cent size copper washer[20 cents the last time i checked]

see we been scamed by being ignorant, when we went metric it was a trick to steal our silver, following decimalisation the only silver in silver was the round 50 cent piece, those who knew of the scam hold most of the real silver even today[a round 50 cent piece is wporeth arround 5 bucks minimum because it has silver in it]

ok its not pure silver [that is your pre ww2 silver, after ww2 they halved the silver in our coin [but no one noticed...lol , so next they took it all

sort of makes the diminishing weight/size in our prepackaged items on the store shelves look like petty theft [what you say , you didnt notice the downsizing , ha ha , go back to sleep