The term in AU used to be two bob millionares.
No matter what people earn, they live to the limit. Over the top with mortgage, Tv in every room, New cars. They have a long way to come down.
The next downturn will see no stimulous spending, because of the out cry of the last one, that kept AU floating.
If the housing pricing falls there will be countless people up to their neck in debt, and no recovery. The missed opportunity is in savings that arn't there.
Give the keys back to the bank, all you have to do then is pay the shortfall.

Clearly, time applies vaseline to the lens of history, thinker 2.

>>...a Multi Function Polis in Sth Australia. The very kind of thing that would have put Australia at the very fore front of technology and the future, and retained the interest of our boffins, particularly if not controlled by business and driven by profits alone.<<

The insight and energy of the late John Button were legendary, as I was fortunate enough to witness first hand. And the MFP was a great concept, for sure. But finally it was proof positive that it is not possible to put lipstick on a pig, and expect it to win Miss Universe.

It was a classic example of the impotence of the public service when faced with turning an idea into a plan.

Senator Button never wavered in his enthusiasm. In 1980 he said "The MFP is an exciting project, a rare example of Australians planning ahead to grasp and control the future for the benefit of the nation"

The ultimate irony being, of course, that it turned out to be a perfect example of Australia's inability to grasp or control anything more complicated than a Sherrin.

Journalist Ben Hill put together an interesting analysis of the project back in 1982.

http://www.benhills.com/articles/articles/MSC12a.html

I particularly enjoyed his description of the site that was "selected".

"If you can picture the pollution of the Ganges, the pestilence of Mexico City and the stinking swamps of the Louisiana bayous, you are getting close. The site itself, around the estuary of the Port Adelaide River, was cursed by nature even before man came along. It is a tidal no-man's-land of mud, barely above sea-level, with the waves of Gulf St Vincent crashing down on one side, and a poisonous flood of urban stormwater pouring in from the other every time it rains. Even tracts of mangroves have given up the ghost and died."

Read it, and weep at the welded-on incompetence of governments, at any level and of any political stripe.

That should of course have been 1990 and 1992, not 1980 and 1982.

Apologies, the decades simply fly past, don't they.

"Read it, and weep at the welded-on incompetence of governments, at any level and of any political stripe."
Except for the really big jobs, like getting to the moon, perhaps?
Or maybe we just need to assassinate any politician who suggests a plan which will take longer than one political term, in order for it (the plan) to become a 'monument to the memory of...'
Seriously folks, remember the Harbour Bridge? The Sydney Opera House, the Snowy River Scheme? We were capable of greatness, once.
Or for that matter H.B. Higgins, and the world shaking concept of 'a living wage'.

Getting back to the original claim for this thread, as I recall it was Kevin Rudd who proudly proclaimed that Australia had the highest minimum wage - *as a percentage of the median wage*.
One of the very few times I've heard a politician even mention the median wage.
the $75k average wage sounds so much better (to someone on >$100k) than a lousy old $40k median wage.
Of course, it would be equally true to point out that 50% of Australians make buggerall more than the minimum wage.

Rehctub's idea has already been tried (and failed) in early 19th century England. Google 'Speenhamland System'. In some areas, reformers had the brilliant idea of using welfare (from the parish, not the central government) to subsidise the wages of the poor, just what rehctub is asking for.

Once the employers knew that the public would make up the difference between what they were willing to pay and what the workers and their families needed to survive, wages fell. Previously independent workers could no longer compete with the subsidised labour and ended up in the system as well. Before they were eligible for the subsidy, they had to become destitute, so if such a worker had any property, say a small piece of land, he or she was required to sell it and live on the proceeds until the money was all gone. Social inequality grew.

As more and more people were forced into the welfare system, benefits fell and rates on property owners rose to pay for the mess. Eventually, wages plus benefits amounted to less than the labourers had received from wages alone before Speenhamland. Large scale employers benefited, but small scale employers like rehctub found that they were paying more in higher taxes than the extra cheap labour was worth. In the end, the system had to be abandoned as unaffordable. Thanks, but no thanks.