Yes the “public has been shielded from an understanding of the real cause of the economic decline”. They also have no idea of how deep it is going to be, or how long any recovery will take.

The UK was saved from a similar fate by Maggie & pools of oil under the north sea. We have been saved by mountains of iron ore, & some coal. So what did we all do, we rewarded ourselves hugely, had a big party, & held our hands out for more.

The middle income folk, say a couple of teachers, 40 years ago were quite happy with a nice 3 bed fibro cottage, a 6 year old car, & perhaps a tinny or a caravan for some fun.

Today it has to be a 5 bedroom McMansion with ducted climate control air conditioning, 2 new cars out front, [they can't fit in the 2 car garage, it's full of toys], a luxury boat, or an overseas trip every year.

The workshy bunch down the road expect public housing to the same standard, & welfare for all the toys.

We'll have to be lucky if we are to only go back to that cottage, rather than a tent in the park. We have pissed so much wealth & opportunity up against the wall, that we really do deserve everything we don't get, or don't get actually.

People like Corbyn & Shorten, promise the world, but are really bring a local Greek catastrophe to our door more quickly, with every wasted dollar.

Eat drink & be merry today folks, then hope you'll member it when the cupboard is empty.

Corbyn and sanders are a return to the hard left
This is the left which strikes the fear of God into our plutocracy
Whether he wins or not is not important what is critical is that after 40 years of soft left appeasement to plutocracy the collective zeitgeist appears to be finally waking up

Hard left is about equality, power distribution and limitation. the soft left which obtained power from the plutocrats fought the symptoms of inequality for 40 years and has achieved nothing but the empowerment of plutocrats.

The message we need to etch into our consciousness: the only cause of racism, war, terror, sexism, bullying , crime... Is inequality
The only cure is equality and redistribution of power

Maybe just maybe we are waking up to the pantomime of tricks designed to divert us from the only thing that has ever mattere

YEBIGA, I think you are pretty spot on accept where you say “The only cure is equality and redistribution of power “. You are one level to high; money is power, as it enables a disproportionate distribution of productive wealth from the productive sector to the non-productive sector.

I think you would appreciate this article that says;

“Over 80 per cent of the wealthiest Australians have made their fortunes in property, mining, banking, superannuation and finance generally - all heavily regulated industries in which fortunes can be made by getting favourable property rezoning’s, planning law exemptions, mining concessions, labour law exemptions, money creation powers and mandated markets of many stripes.”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-26/frijters-foster-battlers-and-plutocrats/6725118

Hasbeen, it’s been a while but I see you are still functioning. I agree with most of your utterings with the following exceptions.

Corbyn & Shorten might be members of the same club but I would call Corbyn a true believer which Shorten can never be.

The Greek catastrophe is that the SYRIZA party did not walk; they should have done an Iceland. Shadow Minister quite rightly states it was a “failed attempt to use brinkmanship”

Shadow Minister also states; “the public has been shielded from an understanding of the real cause of the economic decline” without defining the real cause.

I say it is a combination of the non-productive Political, Finance and Legal sectors pillaging a disproportionate share of productive wealth and destroying our productive capacity at the same time.

Sorry Bazz, you need to spend some time looking into Thorium Reactors if energy is your thing. Click the link on the previous post and watch the movie, I guarantee it will be a couple of hours well spent.

Your still one level to high, as everything comes back to money. Why anyone would spend more time on anything that was not needed, unless the gain exceeded the effort. Only money can facilitate this imbalance, not energy.

Well Producer we have to disagree on the relative importance of energy & money.
Money is only a nominated calibration for energy.
ie so much money expresses the equivalence to a certain amount of energy.
Nothing happens without the expenditure of energy, even digging in
you own veggie garden, the energy for that comes from the diesel used
by the farmer and the truck that delivers your food to the supermarket.

As I said earlier it does not matter who wins the next election, unless
the crash occurs before then, as neither party is either unaware of
what is going on, or they don't want to us to know.
Likewise Corbyn also does not have a clue.

What worries me is that many financial commentators are now warning of
an imminent financial crash. It has a ring of being genuine and I
would have thought it would be a couple of years off.
Not long after Joe Hockey became Treasurer he gave a warning of a
very difficult time ahead. However it now seems to have become a non subject.

Producer,

You are misquoting me. I never claimed “the public has been shielded from an understanding of the real cause of the economic decline” without defining the real cause.

The problem for Greece was decades of Socialist governments that spent wildly funding its deficits from borrowing, and building an economy based on public service (50% of people employed) with generous benefits.

Greece could not do what Iceland did given that the foundations of its economy was stuffed.

PS I like the prospects of using Thorium, but I see the chances of implementing a largely untested new nuclear process as dismal.