Dear Paul1405,

Welcome to modernity!

But doesn't it make you happy to know that your life has been spent keeping yourself clothed, fed, housed and educated in order to make yourself available to work for an employer? And now you are preparing your children to follow in your footsteps. Ah yes, the marvels of social reproduction.

Suze....Just what do you think will change when the bumbling Abbott gets his hands on the top job?
Nothing....

Actually, if nothing happens we will be better off, because it's only when labor has a brain wave, that it turns into more of a brain fart, once they try to implement the idea.

I wish I was like you though, and owned everything, and owed nothing : )
Suseonline,
Don't take so much & you won't owe.

Rehctub, Suse is right, an LNP government won't be able to do much about the economic situation.
The problem is that our economic bubble has been created by the mobilisation of women into work, creating a vast increase in consumerism, including on durables such as housing and on services such as childcare, home maintenance, etc. and there is no more growth to be had from that direction.

Google has an excellent and comprehensive set of graphs based on world bank data (just google "GDP Australia" and all will be revealed) that show the problem very well.

Another part of the problem is that there is a vast divide between two-income professional families and single income families, especially where the income-earner is in a non-professional role. The largest single predictor of a family in poverty is having only one income earner and single-income families are virtually locked out of owning a home without some kind of assistance from extended family. Part of that is down to Howard-era subsidy getting people into housing earlier than their normal savings pattern would have allowed it, but the biggest factor is those two-income families being prepared to spend more.

Unless Hockey/Abbott can find some way to break our economic dependence on consumerism the problem will just get worse, especially once the Chinese domestic development bubble bursts, since India is not likely to come on stream in a big way for a decade or two.

Anyone have any good ideas about how to do that?

Lexi>> "So the best we can do as Trioli points out:

As I queue at the expensive IGA, I grit my teeth and
pay my money, and note with no chagrin as I leave the
supermarket, that the air I breathe is clean and no
bombs fall."<<

Easter greetings Lexi, I am just back from mass and a carbon copy recital of the message from our dear but theistically misguided priest, I swear the sermon is word for word from last year. Rebirth, re growth and hope for the future were the themes, something our nation is looking forward to I thought to myself as I listened.

Whether we get diligent and competent management with the Coalition or not, we need a change. Gough’s govt romped in because the electorate needed social change, a new vibe if you will, as did Kev’s…neither got in because the place was being totally mismanaged…but that is the reason we need change now.

Lexi I understand what the concept of “appreciation” is. Appreciation of what we have rather than coveting what we don’t. The adage of “I cried that I had no shoes until I met the man with no feet” has always resounded in me. But for all we have in this country, we have a load less than we had six short years ago.

As an example of how hollow both sides are I give you this rubbish:

>>We want to be the food bowl of Asia<<…Gillard
>>I want to develop the North for industry and agriculture<<….Abbott

These two imbeciles over look one salient point….we are a net importer of food and goods because without protection policies no matter what we produce, ….you can make or grow it, process it, package it, ship it across the world, and it is still cheaper than home produced products. But in saying all that I still go by track record, huge deficits left by the previous two Labor governments were retired by the Coalition, they get my vote for that reason alone.

Suse posts, "I wish I was like you though, and owned everything, and owed nothing." No you don't kiddo, being in my position, when you didn't have rich parents, means you're too damn old. Much rather be younger & poorer, [& cuter like you & Lexi], even in a difficult financial period.

It can be a strain some times, but getting financially comfortable is a journey worth taking, there's plenty of fun along the way