Yabby:>> as they reflect the problems we have with a whole generation. Noconcept of saving, they are seemingly the heirs to all thistechnology so they will use it to the max, expectatations are
sky high and when the weekly income and budget are blown, they
are pissed off. Most don't even know the word frugal, as people did in the earlier generations.<<

Once again Yabby you move the "fault" from the disease to the patient. I don't know how long you have drawn breath but I am certain that during your adolescence and early adulthood you did not have 30% youth unemployment to contend with, you had a fulltime meaningful job and something to save.

OUG thanks for your support and clarification on the "spin" that springs eternal from our WA landed gentry. In my adolescence I went to uni, had as much part time work as I needed paid rent, electricity and food, had a Holden and a Ducati and lived a student’s lifestyle. I have two uni students under my roof and they both work and study and they certainly could not go out and do as I had done given the fixed costs now involved. In short it was cheaper to live back then; even a student with part time jobs could survive.

Ruined the world? stolen Christmas? doom gloom and gee I have bought some of it about!
I was not watching! let my guard down, sitting out there on my veranda sun, king prawns, beer, I thought it had been a great year good Christmas.
I just have to get in line,wipe the smile off my face, start looking for something to cry about.
Sorry team, I will catch up, kicking the dog ok?
As I wait for next year I promise to piddle on my neighbors trees ok?
Sort off Bellyleaks

http://www.indexmundi.com/australia/youth-unemployment-rate.html

Oops Sonofgloin, Australia's youth unemployment rate got less
over the years, from 1990 to 2007.

I never had a single friend who could afford both a Ducati and a
Holden, whilst attending university. That would only have been
for seriously rich kids.

In the early 70s, you'd either make an effort to learn the skills
which employers could use, or you moved to where the work was.

Of course we coped, we simply did without stuff and made do with
what we had. But looking back, it was a great lesson of learning
to appreciate what you had.

Another interesting observation that I've made is that many of those
seriously rich kids, who were given everything, failed in life and
lost most of it. Those kids who faced a bit of adversity when young,
learnt to work and learnt to make the best of what they had.
They have landed up doing far better in life, they also appreciate
what they do have

This could be a first - but I agree with Yabby's comment about people desiring everything on offer (and there's a lot) and then wondering why the modern version of life requires such expensive upkeep. It's all out there so they gotta have it - right?

sonofgloin - we in Western society are the "royalty" of the world - as far as material availability and enhanced living standards are concerned.
Our planet suffers for our indulgence...I always find it curious when the pampered and fortunate complain of hard times.

(Right on, Belly)

Well I think that alot of truth is finally coming out on this thread.

Belly, yes you have known hard times in your life, you appreciate
what you have. Small things in life can make us very happy. That
is certainly the case for me, but like you, I've faced hard times.

Sonofgloin sounds more like the spoiled little rich kid, who has
never done it tough. Now he is exaggerating things, to try and
make his point of bitch and moan.

Sorry Sonofgloin, but it won't work. If your power bill has
seemingly doubled, without you changing your lifestyle, then
we can establish the truth here. Either your claim is flawed,
or you are indeed telling the truth. Some power company has doubled
their cost of power per hour, usually expressed in cents/KWh

That would be documented. So which power company has doubled their
cost of electricity in the last couple of years? No doubt they
have a website.

Poirot:>> sonofgloin - we in Western society are the "royalty" of the world - as far as material availability and enhanced living standards are concerned.
Our planet suffers for our indulgence...I always find it curious when the pampered and fortunate complain of hard times.<<

Poirot I always find it curious that eco warriors use electricity, petrol, industrially manufactured products and computers. Move to Arnhem Land and then tell me your eco warrior stuff, because then it would not be just rhetoric.

I agree we are harvesting the efforts of those who went before us, as every generation has, so what’s new or wrong. Just to extend your premise. Why should the western world go back to the 18th century while China India and an emerging Africa leap into the 21st? That is in fact what globalization and a free market was meant to achieve. The money looks long term and the new world consumer base is not Europe or the US it is China, India and Africa. We have been used sent broke and spat out.

Belly about being a misery guts, I only whinge on OLO, I thought that is what it is here for.

Yabby I lived in a single room in Annandale, I had an 63 EJ and a 68 250 desmo, I worked weekends at Grace Bros on Broadway and four nights a week I worked at a club. Uni was free and my family had lived in the inner city from the early 1800s right up to the 80's except for a bunch that went to Safala when the Bathurst gold rush beckoned and stayed on the other side of the mountain.

So I am as common as muck, the old man worked on the wharves which he walked to and from for 40 years and the family lived in Wooloomooloo, Paddington and Strawberry Hills, suburbs where week to week subsistence was the norm, no silver spoon. The only economic windfall from my background is that the properties generated massive returns when the olds passed on, but I had made my own life by then.