Wrong Hasbeen, that's just conservative propaganda.
It's not unions that move companies offshore, is it? It's not unions that pay executives multi-million dollar packages, plus bonuses.
It may not be the governments place to supply jobs but neither is it their place to sell out the economy to multinationals, to sell off public utilities for short term fiscal games and gains, and for comfy lucrative board-memberships and directorships after they retire.
Governments place endless hurdles in the way of small business people and companies, yet roll out the red carpet for the big end of town.They ignore outright criminality by the big banks and tax dodging by anyone with the money to play those games. They provide "welfare' subsidies and tax-breaks for industries that don't need it, oil, mining etc, but turn their backs on the small-business sector, the largest employers of all.
Blaming unions is akin to blaming victims of crime in my book, they may not be all that great these days, semi-corrupt and inefficient as they are, but they aren't the problem, greed at the top is, that and political corruption.

Yuyutsu,

<- But what do you do if your culture is unattractive, if it is vacuous? It is then that you can only resort to violence to try and preserve it, grabbing a land by force and forcing others out unless their culture doesn't threaten yours.

This is what cultural-protectionism is about. Were your culture worthwhile, you wouldn't be worrying!>

Grabbing land by force and keeping other people out is the norm for human societies. Apart from Antarctica and a few very remote islands, there isn't a patch of land on Earth that isn't soaked in blood. Read some of the archaeologists who have first hand knowledge of what went on, for example, "Constant Battles" by Prof. Steven LeBlanc (Archaeology, Harvard) and "War Before Civilization" by Prof. Lawrence Keeley (Archaeology, University of Chicago). There are other good books on the same topic and on Malthusian trap societies in general (everyone before the 20th century), mostly by economic historians. See for example, Peter Turchin's "War and Peace and War", Azar Gat's "War in Human Civilization", and Gregory Clark's "A Farewell to Alms". Prof. Steven Pinker has a lot more such references in his "Better Angels of Our Nature."

Prof. Gat has some very nice early photographs of a group of Aboriginal men coming back from a raid on their neighbours, over the ownership of some wells (I think), carrying shields (a technology that is of no use except in warfare). Prof. LeBlanc give us a map of California Indian languages and shows the evidence for at least four waves of invasion, long before the evil Spaniards or the evil Anglos ever arrived. There is no reason to believe that the oldest group really was the first in California.

The only cure is to make everyone everywhere on Earth rich enough that they care about the future and their environment, and have something to lose from violent conflict, and few enough that their neighbours are worth more to them alive than dead. This is, of course, impossible with unending population growth. In the meantime, we need to stick to keeping people out.

Agreed Divergence, we only need growth because we have become locked it to it.

I hate the fact, & would like a no growth strategy if we can ever get there. The only problem is getting there. The budget asked people to wear just a little pain to get our deficit in order, & the voters won't wear it. It would take a hell of a lot more pain to get to a no growth economic model, & no government who tried to get there would survive.

Come off it G'dayBruce, you are sounding like a union troll.

If you think a $100,000 PA pay packet for a process worker is reasonable, you are one of the reasons we are in trouble.

Your ideology is about 50 years out of date, & in fact totally at variance to the practices of Labor governments. They have been the ones subsidising those ridiculous wages for low skilled factory workers with huge hand outs to the car industry & similar hopeless cases. It is the Libs who have stopped it, if you didn't notice.

The class warfare you preach is so long dead, it doesn't even smell any more. Get over it & try something useful.

Huge wage increases have just about closed down mining development, as we have become too high cost even there. That might be a good thing by accident, as we don't need new mines at the moment, with the whole world heading for recession. Might as well keep the stuff, until we can get good prices for it.

Now we have to shut down the BLF, & the ACTU before they destroy the building industry, & have only Centrelink people employed.

Sorry Bruce but I don't agree. Thinking conservatively does not automatically equate to self interest and greed. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip.

Many small business owners, including some franchisees face either not opening on weekends or doing the hours themselves, rather than employing staff on ridiculous penalty rates. The profit margins aren't there for café owners (for example) to pay waiters and dishwashers $30+ per on Saturday and $45+ on Sundays and public holidays. Electricity, rent, wages and other operating costs go up every year but consumers demand lower prices. Small business is getting squeezed from both ends so they close the doors, no one works, and no one profits.

I feel you, the unions and wages rates are completely out of whack with the modern seven day opening hour society that has evolved. The cost of a new TV and almost everything else is much lower than 15 years ago; the cost is the same on Monday as it is on Sunday yet the wages of the floor staff are not equal.

Wages, casual loading, penalty rates and increased super are causing some small business owners to seriously reconsider their business models. When those employers decide to close the doors, reduce staff numbers, or not bring in staff on the weekends, its the workers who lose and they can thank the unions and/or government set pay rates.

This 'conservative' thinking is not rooted in greed; its survival.

Divergence, Hasbeen, Bruce;
You will get your zero growth economy, but not at your timing.
We will have to adapt to it, not the other way around.
We do not have the time to play at it. By the end of this decade it will be everywhere,
not just in Europe and here and Nth America.

It will not be Doom & Gloom time either as countries that can adapt over say a decade
will live happy fulfilling lives, at a less frenetic pace and industry will gradually change
to virtually all local production. There maybe some step changes.

In such a zero growth economy the financial system will be restructured. I do not
know how but there are people already trying to work it out.
It will not be possible to adapt financial models of the 18th & 19th century because
they were growth economies. It will have to be very different as it has never happened before.
Debt as we know it will probably end.

I know that is not a popular scenario but unless some miracle magic pudding is found
it is the way we will go. China is the big question mark in all this, they will have an
enormous food problem and may declare that as the Chinese government owns such
a lot of Queensland they might as well take it all over. Shades of Putin.

There's a huge amount of rubbish in this thread. 'Tis not our population that's unsustainable, it's the decisions we make!

Although it's easier to sustain a lower population, having a lower population is no guarantee of sustainability, and sustainably supporting a higher population really isn't that difficult. If we value the environment highly, we will protect it.

But right now the politicians think fiscal surpluses are more important than the environment, and it seems as if a lot of the public agree.

The prioritization of dubious short term economic targets goes a long way to explaining our failures in vocational eduction too.