Bazz,

I think most of us admire our politicians under
our current PM for listening to the medical
and other experts. Hence we respect them following
knowledgeable people's advice. Who else are we going
to listen to except medical experts in a life
destroying pandemic?

We're lucky to have a PM who does listen and take
advice from experts.

How is this for a "Trait" !
I heard from a landlord that his tenants were on a combined yearly income of $190,000.- but due to COVID-19 this has dropped to $140,000 & they're now seeking a rent relief of $400/month due to reduction of income..
Since when is paying $1900/month out of $11,000/month hardship ?
Is there no means test for such Yuppie cases ?

Agree Individual,

that example is obscene.

I am often staggered by the wealth and income of people when they tell me they are battlers.

Had a big blue with a mate recently who was complaining that his wife paid $40,000 tax and how unjust that was. Globalisation was evil and had supposedly stuffed his life.

But i said hang on, you went on a trip to the Rocky Mountains last year and had planned a trip to the Swiss Alps this year.

You also have four houses, recently sold one so down to three.

Some people just like to whinge.

Most of the people I know in the four house category are heavily in crazy debt so yes that 40k could have gone a fair way to solving that issue- but they are unlikely to tell you their secrets to becoming wealthy- especially when you are criticizing them. ;o)

But yes people do like to whinge.

These people like to think they are creating wealth by maximizing the utility of their assets- and consider this as pretty legitimate. If they don't cover their debt the banks won't hesitate to put them in the poor house- I suspect many of them don't sleep well at night. They generally will brag about their successes but not their concerns- they want to be winners.

Sometimes I think that even though these people are as imperfect as the rest of us- but at least they are taking some action to do something different than the rest of us to crawl out of the ooze.

I'm somewhat concerned about the reliance on the property bubble for growth especially what it means at the national scale- it creates a few different market distortions that have unexpected results- this is where leadership is important. Japan used the property bubble of the late 80's to pull itself out of the post war mallaize I believe- but they were wise enough (both the government and the people) not to let it go too far- but Japan is different than Australia- for one being much more monocultural which limits its growth horizon. There are other strategies that nations use to raise funds temporarily but you need to know that this can't continue indefinitely.

A people needs to be capable of delayed gratification- but this perhaps presupposes cultural rationality.

Canem Malum,
I know several 4-house couples in both private enterprise & Public service. What I found was that neither of them are prepared to take the risk of Capitalism but rather stay safely on the wage/salary side of employment & milking the show to the last drop by widening every possible loophole.
They can do it because Govt lets them do it but it should not be permitted in my view !
It's a huge hole in our Tax system & it causes the greedy to gain & the decent to lose !
Our tax system is definitely not Nation-building !

Individual- I tend to agree that there are issues with the property investment framework. I have been seeing many problems as reducing to open borders. If there wasn't open borders for immigration then the demand side of the property market is reduced so it would bring the prices down. There is heavy opposition to a falling property market. The electorate struggles to see the downside risks- in fact many stakeholders actively demonize those with the opposing view here- the Real Estate Institutes, the Socialists, property investors, etc, etc. At some stage something has to break.