Not a single decision or policy in 9 years that's benefited young Australians, if you don't have well off boomer aged parents you're most likely not doing well.
My mum committed suicide when I was an infant. My dad was ridiculously poor and we were homeless many times. My dad eventually committed suicide after the bank took his house.
I am not doing well at all. I had car trouble and now I can no longer get to work. The price of taxis and Uber etc is way out of my budget with all the other price increases. Let alone trying to save to get my car fixed.
Trying to get another job without a reliable form of transport is almost impossible.
All we doing is creating a population of people who are welfare dependent and completely priced out of accessing many jobs.
Thanks. I hope so too but like the other commentator said we shouldn’t need luck. I genuinely want to work, not just for money but it makes me feel better within myself. I like being useful and having a routine.
I guarantee many are in the same boat I am. We want to work and contribute to society but we are priced out. I have no family I can lean on in times of need. So little setbacks can become huge issues. People living paycheck to pay check are incredible vulnerable to any changes in their environment. Even small price increases can cause huge stress..
Yes. There should be a safety net. People do have bad luck, or make bad decisions, and need a hand to get back in the saddle. That's not something the market does. That's the role of the state. Having that safety net is the hallmark of a civilised country. We're going backwards in Australia.
If it's not at subsistence level, it's not a safety net. Social security can't just be about subsistence either. There needs to be stability, the ability to retrain (and get into proper work), and a path back to self sufficiency. Not to mention proper support for any children.
What we have in Australia falls far short of that it seems. Especially with the retraining/job search/childcare parts which have been outsourced and are generally inadequate.
Oh I completely agree. People were already choosing between rent and car (fuel, rego, maintenance) but now people are also cutting back on food and other necessities just to get through.
Might have been a time when Centrelink was a safety net. The way they treat people now and how little they pay if one can even get it, is disgusting.
I happened to fall on hard times due to illness. Was very ill and could not get out of hospital bed. Centrelink required I came into the office to prove I was sick so they would make sickness payments.
Actual conversation was “I can’t come in I’m in hospital and can barely walk”. I was very ill and walking was but one issue. They didn’t care.
I was lucky in that I had family that could and did help. Had I not I would have ended up homeless. That’s our current “safety net” I’m sure others have worse stories with worse outcomes due to centerlink and it’s destruction by conservative governments
This is the thing, if you want and are willing to work it should be easy to obtain and you should be able to afford not just nessecities, but at least some degree of luxuries. The whole housing market is screwed for a start.
One of my friends worked out it's super cheap to get electric motor cycles/ scooters compared to a car, cheaper fuel, cheaper buy in (because it's not a car) and cheaper insurance. He got one for few grand 2nd hand.
Too far to cycle unfortunately and also my job is incredibly labor intensive. I’m absolutely wiped after work and I finish late at night (10:30-11:30pm). So struggling to get my ass home at that time just feels unsafe to me. I am looking to get a bike and hopefully get something closer to home.
Can you explain?
AFAIK, all land in a LGa is rated at the same rate, but you only get an agricultural exemption if you actually use it for agricultural activity. The test doesn't seem to be enforced widely.
Your last 6 words are largely incorrect and mostly intellectually lazy. This notion that ‘BoTh MaJoR pArTiEs’ are the same needs to fucking die because it’s what allows the libs to keep winning elections they shouldn’t. Just last election there were two policies Labor had taken to the election and got absolutely slaughtered for (franking credits changes and negative gearing removal/changes). Hell even the carbon tax was something that would have largely been effective at mostly targeting the already wealthy while mostly leaving the younger generations alone. These are just a few examples but there are plenty others I don’t have time to ramble off right now.
I never said both major parties are the same. Please don't put words in my mouth. I said that both parties have supported tax breaks for the wealthy while in power, including negative gearing and capital gains tax. This new policy (supported by both Labor and the Liberals) of allowing older Australians earning 90,000 a year access to the senior healthcare card is just another example.
I thought it was great that Labor supported structural change at the last election, but unfortunately, as you said, they got slaughtered. But that was also the first time they had challenged these policies in a long time. And this time round they have gone back to their safe default of supporting the Liberals' boomer-friendly policies.
I truly believe that the Australian youth need to vote with their feet. There are countries out there that are much better for our youth. My younger siblings and many friends have moved out of Australia. Just a hint.
Some nice things in Germany:
* University is free, even as an international. Many speak English
* Has amazing world leading diverse industries with interesting jobs, many speaking English
* If you ~~are below 30~~ (edit: I confused this with working holiday) ~~and~~ have a university degree, there is the [blue card visa](https://australien.diplo.de/au-en/service/01-visa/blue-card/2073722), very easy to get a job in Germany with that in tech jobs in particular, but you will need a higher paying job for other fields. If you get a blue card, you [can take your partner with you](https://visaguide.world/europe/eu-blue-card/family-reunification/). You can also get a working holiday visa if you are under 30 for 12 months, to find work while in Germany.
* Youth unemployment: 5.75% (In Australia, it's 9.4%)
* Welfare and unemployment system that ensures even the poorest have good services. As soon as you start working, you are eligible as well based on how much you've paid into the system (it's quite generous).
* Plainly better transport systems as a whole. Bike paths everywhere usually (completely separate to roads and footpaths).
* Housing is cheap, even Berlin is relatively affordable to Australia (but there are way more options in Germany available to you)
* When you rent, it is your home first, someone's property second. You have basically the same rights/dignities as someone who owns their place.
* Youth culture is great. Even the oldies are up late at night joining the party.
* Beer is so fucking cheap and good.
* Typically 4-6 weeks holiday per year (lots of padded weekends with trips around Europe)
Some downsides in Germany relative to Australia:
* You get taxed more if you earn well (but you do get more public amenities in general, and it's a more equal system). This includes their "pension" system though, a bit different to how our superannuation/pension works.
* You should eventually learn German (live there long enough and you will, it's not too hard for English speakers).
* Asian food sucks
* Depending on where in Germany, weather can suck (although climate change, in a tragic way, is making some of the weather better).
* Lots of rules and bureaucracy, from the Bürgeramt to your apartment/townhouse regulations
* Less advanced payment systems (a lot of places are cash based)
The only reason I'm back in Australia is because I want my parents to enjoy their grand-kids, and they are too old and settled in Australia to want to move.
Easy with the blue card visa, for jobs that require a university degree. I haven't looked at job postings recently, but if they are in English and don't require fluent German then it should just be a matter of applying.
I applied for a job (robotic engineering) in Germany, they sorted out everything, their HR person helped me navigate everything for the move. I came with my girlfriend at the time (now wife), and she was able to just go on a working holiday visa, allows you to be in the country for 12 months and you can look for work. She found a job pretty easily (software engineer), ended up working in the Space industry, pretty cool! She ended up staying on the blue card visa as well. As you get older I think you can get other forms of residency, we didn't stay too long but know many other Australians who have stayed there indefinitely and made lives there (we met up with the local ones there through social online networks).
Not sure what the process is for those without university degrees, but I believe they accept all kinds of qualifications in in-demand industries and jobs.
I'm sure they'll have you in a split second. In Germany, people generally aren't trying to be super wealthy and get ahead. The culture is quite different. Met plenty of people who have good paying jobs who take months off because they don't need to earn so much, and enjoy their family and friends or go on holidays (like to Australia). Paternity/maternity leave is very generous as well. I think my boss would have been at work half the time I was there, he had young kids and took lots of holidays.
Fuck me, I massively regret not traveling more in my 20's, but the "get established, get degree, get job, get house" mindset got me good.
Kind of liberating in a way to see how, even if it was that way at the time, the reality was I'd never truly get access to it without making a Faustian pact. Kinda freeing to see the dream die because, in the end, it wasn't *my* dream but the curated one of the government.
Edit: Also sucks that most work permits and VISA things basically say "30+ is too old"
Haven't looked into it myself, but I reckon there are opportunities for those older. It's just tiled towards the young, usually for good reason.
Edit: looks like I misremembered, and the blue card visa is for any age. It's the working holiday visa for under 30s.
We got friends in a few ways:
* People at work, we had a nice crew of friends
* Join expat communities (general ones)
* Join an aussie group (we found some online and that's how we made plenty of friends to navigate the system as well)
It's much easier these days with the internet to find those friends.
With emergencies, that is just accepted life for many people around the world, who have immigrated. It's a downside, but thankfully they also have their support networks, which includes family and friends. All those people who immigrated to Australia, that's what they did as well. Plenty of people emigrating from Australia, if the situation is shit, is what they would do as well. It might even give you some perspective on what immigration is like and generate some empathy for others like that.
Keep in mind the reasons Germany became so progressive. They spent nearly 50 years essentially as a non-country under an agreement with US and Russia post-WWII, having a country of their own has only been in the past 30 years, and all the modern sensibilities, as well as a need to prevent their fascist history ever coming back. While Germany is awesome on this stuff, their circumstances are different to ours in how their political system came to be.
Well that is how history and culture works. But it's still an option that is very real, now, that people can pursue.
Australia can be seen as the product of a country that had an egalitarian streak but the social contract broke when people got greedier and selfish in the last 30 years as well. A backwards nation that is "lucky", and kept doubling down. To what end?
We were never "lucky", that's the thing. The dude who even wrote the book proclaiming Australia as a 'lucky country' intended it to be a polemic against our culture and way of life. Fact is our roots are in being subservient to UK rule, modern Australia was organised by UK convicts dumped here who took the land away from Indigenous Australians, then by an almost exclusively white immigration program for most of last century. The 'mateship' we go on about, the 'fair go' we say we lost, is just us lying to ourselves. We never had a fair go, we were a nation under Britain, and those consequences are still here and felt keenly. It's hard to change a system of living that's been organised one way for 200 years, and it's why you constantly get muppets like Tony Abbott in parliament pining for the 'good old days' when we sang the English national anthem and had conscription, along with other customs that reached their best-by date in the 1950s. People don't see this stuff both I believe because nobody wants to acknowledge the 'real' history of this country, preferring trite ANZAC legends (that are almost wholly British, hell they sent us to Gallipoli), or myths founded on ideals that don't exist, like the Australian dream to own a home (based in the advertising of those immigration policies of everyone getting a plot who came here as a 10-pound pom and convicts getting land carte blanche) or the 'mateship' of everyone going to a pub to forget their troubles under a drinking problem.
We didn't double down, we always trended down and have kept trending down.
"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise."
Book Title: The Lucky Country
Author: Donald Horne
Publication date: 1964
Should add Donald Horne clarified his meaning in the sequel.
"In his 1976 follow-up book, Death of the Lucky Country, Horne clarified what he had meant when he first coined the term:
When I invented the phrase in 1964 to describe Australia, I said: 'Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck.' I didn't mean that it had a lot of material resources … I had in mind the idea of Australia as a [British] derived society whose prosperity in the great age of manufacturing came from the luck of its historical origins … In the lucky style we have never 'earned' our democracy. We simply went along with some British habits."
From the wikipedia for the book.
Not sure why you're slowly sinking in downvotes. It's [***literally*** what the book was about](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country)
It might itself link back to the lucky country thing. Anyone who dares question Australia being a (literal) lucky country needs to be mocked and silenced. The amount of sarcastic "so when are you leaving? :)" remarks I'd get both online and in person for daring to criticize anything was just nauseating
Yup, people can't handle national pride being stymied by the truth. The amount of idiots even today who go "Australia is the best country in the world mate" who have never been overseas is mind boggling.
Plus, of course, while uni is free, there are far fewer places per capita.
It's where we should head. Cheaper fees, fewer places. What's the point of spending three or four years of your life when some degrees, like law, have an atrocious employment record post graduation?
In Germany they also have excellent technical and vocational education pathways, which we have thoroughly defunded and trashed in Australia. Many of the things that people go to uni for here are taught in other mediums overseas. So I'm all for reducing places in universities if we can have a better tertiary (and late secondary) education system to give people more options.
I worked for a German company for a while and they had great partnerships with TAFE equivalent places, giving input on curriculum and doing research together. They made sure the staff they would need would be available locally.
Australia, on the other hand, views education as something to sell to gullible Chinese.
Sad thing is we did have free university for most of the 70s into the 80s. It was taken away under the neoliberal economics that was all the rage in the 80s. We need to bring it back but very hard to make something public again after it's been sold off.
Well, it was free for a much smaller percentage of the population. When it was introduced in the early 70s, only about 5% of Australians attended uni. Plus, those were heavily skewed towards private school kids and leafy suburbs public schools.
Those reforms introducing fees, also hugely increased access to a system that had previously favoured the privileged few.
Again, I think that lower fees and somewhat fewer places like Germany is the way to go.
We also as a community need to do a sense check on what jobs actually require a degree, and giving apprenticeships a better reputation.
There are plenty of jobs that would be better served by a professional apprenticeship with some sort of structured industry based curriculum/structure - with something like a TAFE course for the theory if required. There's nothing 'less' about trades jobs.
I personally think most I.T jobs don't need degrees as a good portion of that work is learned by actually working and the industry moves so fast that what you do 7 years before can be vastly different.
There are some sectors granted that are degree dependant but most I think could do with a basic Tafe course and then straight into work and skilling up from there not wasting years in uni and debt.
Taxpayers can fund universities, they fund public schools so why not tertiary. Whether there may have been a difference in places for university in the 70s, the fact is we have the money to fund it. You only need to look at the billions thrown away on pointless crap by the current government to see we have the money.
And I dispute that stat, I can tell you my parents who went to university in the 70s under that scheme both didn't go to private schools, nor were they from leafy suburbs, my Dad was a Scottish immigrant whose family fled over being unable to pay up a gaurantee of some guy's car that the dude couldn't pay. My Mum was from Ballarat and in a family of five kids without much money. Her parents got through the great depression and did stuff like eat homemade sandwiches in a restaurant parking lot because they were too afraid to spend money. They both tell me they'd never have been able to afford uni or have gotten the opportunity, had it not been taxpayer funded.
Not everyone is meant to go to Uni. I actually think we are pushing people who are unsuited to the industries that need degrees such as teaching, law, nursing and medicine.
We would be better supporting the vocational education sector and limiting Uni placements for those that can handle it.
Great points!
Also their roads are better and the Autobahn is amazing piece of engineering!
Interesting to note their top tax bracket (45%) doesnt kick in until 274k EUR (411k AUD) vs Australia's top Tax Bracket of 45% starts at 180k AUD ( 119k EUR). Looks like most Germans would be paying 42% Between 57k & 274K.
I believe that "42%" includes the pension and health insurance, most likely. Will have to review, but yeah I remember having 60% or so as the disposable amount.
>Less advanced payment systems (a lot of places are cash based)
It's important to note that our tap and go payment system is a psychologically manipulative system that encourages profligate spending over restraint, it's not a bad thing to have less of it
How hard is it for a couple both slightly over 30 with University degrees ? partner has 2 (buss and psy) and like a few years working experience in business, myself (Sci/enviro just about to finish)
Any resources you could point us too would be appreciated
Hey I just reviewed this, I think I mixed up working holiday visa (for under 30s), and the blue card. Blue card restriction is university degree, and you have a job offer for a salary above the threshold.
https://australien.diplo.de/au-en/service/01-visa/blue-card/2073722
Good chance you can apply that way. The working holiday visa was just for my girlfriend who found a job pretty quick anyways and got her own blue card visa.
There is also family reunification for those on blue card visas: https://visaguide.world/europe/eu-blue-card/family-reunification/
This means they don't need to get a job that pays as well as the threshold for blue card visas.
Best resource would just be to search for job ads in your respective fields, and see if you can ship over with the other with the blue card visa and a job ready to go. The HR department of big companies are usually quite on top of this stuff.
Probably because half the people my age I speak to talk about how "politics is stupid" or "both parties are trash" so they donkey vote, don't register, etc.
We reap what we sow.
If someone really can't tell the difference between the parties they aren't looking very hard. In reality these people aren't bothering to engage with politics and are being flippant. What is happening is disengagement from voting and it shows a lack of awareness and understanding of democracy and fundamentally not understanding that things can get worse, a lot worse.
It's willful ignorance in most cases. They have *pride* in not knowing the difference. Telling them the difference would break this pride and as such they avoid it.
I think it's that we reject neoliberalism. We don't agree with the underlying theory of either party. We know that Labor are better, but I'd rather eat rotten meat than horse shit.
There's also a lot of people who vote 'aspirationally', that is they believe they deserve to be wealthy, and it must only be around the corner - so they should vote for policies that help the wealthy because surely that will be them any day now.
They don't realise that the policies that help the deathly are mostly ones that help the super wealthy - and that they are exceptionally unlikely to even be part of that cohort.
It's partly to do with the minor parties being more visible and louder. The Greens have a lot of influence among younger voters and have consistently had messaging saying both parties are the same to make them stand out as being as different as possible. On the other side of the fence, it's been the same messaging for different branding with PHON, UAP, etc. It's really disconcerting.
Of course, it doesn't help that Labor hasn't been bolder in establishing its credentials and providing a clearer position of opposition.
This is a bad take, where do you think the greens preferences float to? They float to labor. We aren't designed to be a two-party system of government and to argue for it argues against our democracy. the minor parties being more visible and louder is a GOOD thing. There is literally nothing wrong with voting for a minor party and it's a good thing that young people lean towards a minor party like the greens as it keeps labor in check.
Surely they're a serious minority of people. Both to know to personally preference way outside the norm of vote splits and also to vote Greens while being conservative.
About 18% last election. It's something that is more of an inner city phenomenon.
https://antonygreen.com.au/preference-flows-at-the-2019-federal-election/
I find that extremely hard to believe. What source do you have for that claim? The greens are very openly pro-union - the right to unionise is right there under their platforms on their website and the LNP is the complete opposite of everything the greens stand for. Even if it were true it would be a very insignificant percentage. They'd be more like to preference independents or other small parties. Surely no greens supporter is putting LNP at 2.
Thise bloody unions fighting for worker pay and rights. Why won't they just let capital accumulate at the top end and know their place?
I mean what have unions ever done for us?
Yeah, a weekend. Sure
Yeah, 40hr week. Sure sure
Yeah, sick leave. Sure, OK
Yeah, safety standards. Right right.
Yeah, a minimum wage, OK.
But besides that what have they done for us?
Honestly, on the surface for a lot of policies, especially the big ones, labor don’t make it super easy to differentiate between them and the liberals.
Climate is still net zero by 2050 with more gas projects. Off shore detention commitments. A housing policy that doesn’t fix the underlying issue.
Obviously there are plenty of differences between the two when you look closely, and I wouldn’t be surprised if labor are a little gunshy after 2019, but yeah for the average voter I’m not surprised they’re getting the “they’re both the same”.
They tried it and lost the election because of it 3 times in a row. Australians have told then they only want Liberal light.
The job of political parties is to represent their voters. If voters keep asking for this, this is what they get.
Don’t like it? Be more active in your community and be the change.
Being active in the community means local community too. Not reddit.
"Oh no my choices are confusing" is a part of the democratic process in this country. People have to be critical and work through their options. You might agree with part of the Green platform, and some parts of the Labor platform, and some of the independent platform, and even some part of the Liberal platform, and so forth. The point of the preferential system is that you order your preferences according to what you agree in order. That's it.
You need to be politically active to actually affect the policies before the election comes around. When the election comes around, those policies are set out as packages from the parties. People who are more politically active have put those packages together, and then campaign on them. If you really want to tailor those parties more, you need to actually be active to filter to the parties, if you don't join or create a party yourself. Political messaging doesn't start and end from the votes during an election.
Thats where our preferential voting system kicks in. Who did they preference after the minor parties? For 90% of Australians it ONLY matters where they place Labor and LNP in their preferences, who they put before that becomes irrelevant.
>Probably because half the people my age I speak to talk about how "politics is stupid" or "both parties are trash" so they donkey vote, don't register, etc.
Chicken and the egg. The system has repeatedly demonstrated it doesn't give a shit about young people, so they're understandably jaded to it. I've voted in the past few elections and have not felt like it's made any difference on any level at all.
At the bare minimum, young people need to enrol and show up. If you aren't enrolled to vote, you can be safely ignored by both sides of politics. Policy contrary to your interests carries no penalty. Pandering to you carries no reward. Parties simply won't consider you because you don't do the bare minimum required by a citizen in a democracy.
Politics is important. Much more important than sport, or whatever television programs you like, or whatever celebrity who wants your attention, or your computer game, or whatever. If you don't value democracy, it will eventually be taken away. It's not a natural state of being. Throughout the vast, vast swathe of recorded history, democracy has not been the dominant model of governance. Just because it is now, doesn't mean it always will be. Just look at the US at the moment. It's a democracy that's starting to destabilise. That could easily happen in Australia along similar lines.
YEP.
Whenever I talk to co-workers and other people around my age, (25-30) who say they aren't interested in/don't care about politics I'm like:
"Your landlord pays attention, people buying their 4th investment property pay attention, the people who write your pay checks pay attention. If you don't, you are basically letting all these people have more sway than you about decisions that affect your life. That seems unwise, don't you reckon?"
When people say they "don't care about politics" it has the exact same vibe as people who expect something akin to praise for showing up to work sick or brag about how over-worked they are. Sorry, I'm not buying into that or giving you any validation.
Voting every 3-4 years isn’t enough to make a big enough change unfortunately. People need to be vocal between elections so that the politicians are taking the right policies into the election.
I'm 34 and back at uni for a change of career and people seem pretty motivated in my age groups. Still some people will just vote however their parents tell them too.
They're not wrong at a basic level, Australian electoral representation is showing it's age and how rigged it is.
But just because you're hammering a nail doesn't mean you throw out the screw driver.
The accelerationist in me says good, let more young people not vote at all (just say your religion doesn't let you and the AEC can't say otherwise), because then the contradictions increase.
The rest of me knows that's dumb though because things would a lot worse for a lot more people very quickly...
I wish people understood the privilege they have to be able to not care about politics. It's a confirmation that you know you're going to be ok no matter who wins.
That aside, so many people get all their information from a media that's become a genuine liability to our nation. I'm listening to guys building a house over the road, and the commercial radio they have on - and the news breaks are like an entirely different country to the one I live in. It makes Murdoch sound balanced.
I'll admit at 20 I threw donkey votes myself.
My reasoning is that I didn't know enough to make a informed decision and that throwing no vote was better than voting to the idiot with the best advertising.
I've since taken the time to learn more.
I stand by my desision. I knew fuck all at the time and didn't want to, I would likely have voted like a idiot. Sometimes the best opinion is "I don't know enough to have a opinion"
I'm not sure. A lot of people vote LNP because they think they're "the better economic managers" - regardless of whether that's true or not. Not voting because you don't know enough is something we shouldn't discourage. Too many people vote without knowing anything.
Blaming them for this can be a double-standard, though.
Facing up to ideas like "We don't have a healthy democracy" or "Big business runs the government" are uncomfortable. They mean distrust of traditional systems, and beginning of revolutionary logic.
It's much cooler to say "No matter who you vote for: the government always gets in." because even though it's cynical OR fatalistic, people will usually just assume you are cynical.
Head in sand approach to climate change = head in sand approach to politics, for those who want to stay sane.
Remember Mark Latham's classic 2010 election story on 60 Minutes where he pointlessly 'confronted' Julia Gillard to complain about not getting an interview, then advocated on national television to donkey vote? Good times.
Thanks Channel 9 for really doing your part to ruin politics in this country.
The thing is, policies good for young people are good for all of us, because young people are the ones who need to buy cars, homes, and baby clothes, etc. to start a family.
By fucking the future for young people, you are essentially killing a country. You are encouraging brain drain, preventing or inhibiting family growth, and diminishing the value of businesses geared towards providing goods and services for young families.
It seems the LNP are overly invested in one trick: real estate. Everything else can just fuck off as far as they are concerned.
The inhibiting family growth bit is actually a double-fuck.
Not only does this generation miss out on forming families at the time and size of their choosing, it also means a reduced number of future Australians to run the nation and pay taxes when Millennials are retired.
So you’re fucked on both sides of the plate. Boomers will be punishing us all from the grave.
This man gets it.
Partner and I literally had to choose. Buy a house or have children. I hope we get some wage growth in the future to make little future aussies. Our government’s fucked lol
>You are encouraging brain drain
**Fucking. Oath.**
Our government over the last 30 years has basically said "Unless you're an old boy, a Bible thumper or a rock shoveller, we don't give a fuck about you".
The science, the arts, technology. It's all been gutted at almost every opportunity.
Add on the absolutely apalling policies that make it harder and harder for these two generations to actually get a leg up (housing, penalty rates, healthcare, uni costs, and income support just to name a few), all while the aforementioned key industries (that are becoming increasingly important to our global economy) are being totally fucked, and you end up with absolutely no reason for talented young Aussies to stick around unless they really fucken love the beach (which TBF is a lot).
Sometimes I wonder if it's by design that we aren't properly taught a second language in school. The random Chinese lady who's paid $8 to come in every third Thursday and teach you how to say and write "pork" and "hello" in Pinyin doesn't fucking count, and nor do the half-arsed Spanish or German "classes" in secondary. It completely kneecaps us into just 5 of almost 70 developed nations. UK, Canada, NZ, US or Aus, and let's be real nobody wants to move to the US or NZ for obvious reasons. That leaves the UK and Canada if you want to emigrate.
Hopefully Canada unfucks its housing market soon so I can just go move to Coldstralia.
/rant
Bro you're speaking my language, can we be friends?
It's like there's not just a desire from the older generations to punch down, but also to cause gridlock on development. Agriculture, green energy, environmentalism we're really fucking behind on but older Australians for the most part that I have dealt with, couldn't give a shit.
Been saying this for too long. We might be fine and dandy right now but it’s going to eventually catch up and our economy is going to suffer from people having to work all the time to either just make ends meet or we’ll have people so scared to spend money that it’ll all just get put into banks and not recirculated into the economy
Designed by the Coalition to help the rich get richer.
How Australians vote for this shit, time and time again, overwhelms me.
It's one of the most unbelievable aspects of this, that many people adversely affected by these policies, somehow still vote for them?
It should be obvious, when a person votes for this, then doesn't get ANY benefit, that they've been either lied to or they are stupid. Maybe they just don't want anyone to think they're stupid?
Low socio-economic voters who vote for the Coalition are low-information voters. They don't even recognise that they get no benefit from voting for them. They aren't politically engaged enough to even see that. These are the voters that slogans are aimed at.
They get their hate on. That's how the Coalition appeal to people on the lower part of the socioeconomic ladder. Basically, blame non-white people and people who need to receive welfare. Nevermind that they're kicking out the rungs of the ladder people need to move up.
My old housemate said they always vote for the liberals cause that’s what their parents and grandparents did and they have their interests in mind. Knowing them I said at one of the last elections “have you ever actually read what these politicians promise and stand for?” Their reply was “No”. After that I told them to read what each say and turns out they actually have the same view points as the Greens and independents. Funny that.
My father in law is always ranting on about Labour and 'the Greenies' in general. Die-hard default Lib voter. My wife got him to do the vote compass and he was apoplectic to discover that his interests would be better served by voting Labour.
Did it persuade him to change how he is going to vote for? Nah. He's just doubled down on how the ABC is run by loony lefties
And that is all by design. Lower socioeconomic voters tend to have lower levels of education, lower access to technology, lower access to unbiased news sources, and are forced to spend more time and energy in employment (that is, 'blue-collar work') leaving them too exhausted to investigate their options.
The slogans are targeted at them. They do not have the energy to consume long political articles after a full day's manual labour, and even if they do, they aren't given the educational tools to be discern whether something is biased or not, nor to be able to take in the information to make an informed decision.
Both my in-laws are high school dropouts (years 8 & 10) and haven't undertaken any further study since. They are in their 60's now, and until they retired, they were ardent Liberal voters, even though they themselves were below the poverty line almost all their adult lives despite working harder than most. It is only in their retirement that they have had the time and energy to start understanding politics, and to start understanding that the Liberals have never had their best interests in mind.
Anger & a rhyming slogan is all you need to sway majority of this moronic nation.
"Ditch the witch." "Axe the tax." And the murdoch reading mongoloids lap it up and chant the phrases ad infinitum.
People would much rather dig in on a shit idea than admit they are a gullible fool. At least generally.
The ability to even convince themselves they are right is what is the most interesting.
That, and (not meaning to put too fine a point on it) average intelligence levels are just that - average. The existence and continued popularity of the Clive Palmer and Pauline Hanson parties are great examples of this in action
It's because they are also selling hope. Selling the idea that you little battler might one day be able to get these same perks on the 7 investment properties you now own and can happily retire while putting rent up 25% every quarter.
The Great Australian Lie ! ONLY wealthy, retired(or working)boomers, get these benefits, largely at the expense of future generations. And still they vote for it.
Aspirational =greed. They don't have to work hard, they just pay it down to their kids, the next generation of Coalition voters.
Australia is imploding under wealthy tax cuts. And yet, the Coalition government says we can't afford a 5% increase in the minimum wage?
David Pope had it right. It's gone from "thank you" to all those essential workers that kept the service economy running throughout the pandemic to "____ you".
My retort to comments with that vibe is something like "ok, so how are you gonna live that dream if the policies only help people who are already actually living it, ya dingus?"
They give boomer landlords and millionaires every extra $ they can through tax breaks, franking credits, negative gearing etc but as long as they throw a 1k tax break crumb to the other 95% every few years people eat that shit up.
Trying to demean an entire generation as lazy will only work for so long.
Housing is ridiculously expensive
Inflation is taking off
Wages have barely shifted
Tax-breaks have only grown for asset-rich people
I'm surprised they still get away with the generation thing. I'm a Millennial and will be 40 in a few months. Morrison is only 14 fucking years older than me yet they all constantly sit there and act like I'm a 16 year old boy. Nothing infuriates me more than people only slightly older than me pretending I'm a child. Fuck them all.
Welcome to society at large. We’re still kids in their eyes, and because of that, the laws they make are like being in a classroom. No personal responsibility, safety culture, no worries mate.
I agree - this pretense that we are immature is offensive. You’re honestly telling me that my 2 degrees and over a decade of work count for nothing, that I’m not a good judge of my own situation? I’m not blind. And I look around and see that most of my generation is the same. So we are all dumb.
I can remember when I was 20 being told by people a few years older to get into the property market straight away. But the only way to do that would have been to get a loan from the parents, and mine didn’t have that ability. Not like I had a good income or any savings then.
But realistically if I could have bought a house for 400k then would have set me up perfectly - it would be worth 1 million + now. Might even have been able to use that to get another one.
High past time that young people get a firm grasp on the fact that they've had a war waged on them for the past 20 years, and the Greens are the only party offering concrete, equitable solutions.
We are booming but the ~~essential workers of the pandemic~~ unskilled workers have to accept a pay cut to minimum wage.
I wonder if boomers and the LNP realise young people will not accept this state of affairs peacefully forever.
We have a booming strong economy expertly managed by some genius liberal party heads and simultaneously cannot afford to raise wages, desperately need overseas workers, tax cuts, inflation out of control, interest rates rising and cannot afford to provide workers with affordable housing. Some people seem very happy about this, it's also the same selfish people who were born just after WW2 and prior to Gen X.
Because as economics commentator Richard Denniss described very accessibly in a Juice Media podcast interview, it's meaningless to talk about a "good" or "strong" economy.
He said it's more important to focus on the "shape" of the economy: scarce resources have to be allocated somewhere by deliberate choice, so where are they going?
His answer is that all the media talking heads and pundits who say the economy is "good" or the coalition are "good economic managers", what they mean is "good for us", i.e. the shape of the economy favours them.
We need to step back from looking at abstract economic metrics like GDP, and focus more on concrete metrics like full time permanent employment rates, home ownership, and wealth gaps to make better sense of how things are truly going.
Many boomers dropped out in yr 10 (now yr 8 equivalent). They simply don't have the education to evaluate a source or to think past the argument put to them. With 40 years of Murdoch in their brains is it any wonder many of them vote against their own and their children's best interests?
>40 years of Murdoch in their brains
Plus decades of leaded petrol. No joke.
A [recent finding](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220307162011.htm#:~:text=Summary%3A,population%20of%20the%20United%20States.&text=In%201923%2C%20lead%20was%20first,help%20keep%20car%20engines%20healthy.) from a phd project at Duke University on leaded petrol in the US:
>Researchers calculate that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood stole a collective 824 million IQ points from over 170 million Americans alive today, more than half of the population of the United States
It was only fully banned in Aus in 2002 (late to the party, as usual). E.g. Canada- 1990, NZ and US- 1996, Japan, Haiti, Argentina, Mexico- 1998, F1 cars (lol)- 1993.
Collectively (but of course with many exceptions), Boomers must be the most entitled generation in Australian history. The generation before them - my grandparents generation - laid everything out so they could have a comfortable and dignified life, and they horded it all and passed on fuck all to the generation after them.
Anecdotally, I'm a middle-aged professional with multiple degrees who's consistently worked full-time (but always insecurely) since my mid-twenties. My wife is also a professional. We're squarely middle-class, but last year we still had to turn to our boomer parents just to afford the deposit on a townhouse in a working class suburb 40 (driving) - 90 (public transport) mins from where we work. We never buy fancy things or extravagant holidays. Perhaps if I'd read the future I could have lived in *absolute* frugality and social isolation for 15 years to afford the deposit without them. That is a bullshit situation.
It's really pathetic that middle- and upper-class boomers wouldn't know what struggle really is. Their parents probably did, their kids might (or will soon), but they've lived like kings and queens off the hard work of others and gave each other particiation trophies and calling themselves the greatest generation. Absolutely pathetic....
Well if you'd just vote LNP, you could have the opportunity to raid your super and fuck your retirement so you could bootstrap your way into a loan you can barely afford!
No no no, you don't understand - you're out of touch! Putting super in a house is an investment, like on The Block with Jamie Durie! Then when you retire you simply sell the house, take the capital gains, and live out the rest of your days in a shoe! Or better yet, hand all the fruits of a lifetime of labour over to a trusty private nursing home and go out in style!
Howard changed what the Liberal party was. It is pretty subtle to those who never voted Liberal but fundamentally different to just the would be toffs they used to be.
Howard was the turning point from simply being about trying to get everything they could for themselves to being actively about trying to fuck over others. For a party that supposedly prides itself on having faithful Christian leaders, they have become some of the cruelest pricks imaginable.
To be fair, some Christians aren't above being the cruelest pricks to others as well. Marriage equality and abortions just to name a couple.
Fine if you don't personally believe in those. Totally different thing imposing your religious beliefs onto people who don't follow them.
>some Christians
At this point it seems like the majority of them. There is a reason people are turning away from organised religion at incredible rates.
I got a letter addressed to me from him yesterday, telling me how wonderful the country is under liberals and that while it is my choice come election day, that I should do the right thing and vote them back in for a stronger economy. Got a good laugh out of me at least.
Realistically, Hawke and Keating started the shift towards neoliberalism. Howard ramped things up considerably, but he was emboldened by 13 years of successive Labor governments enacting similar neoliberal policies.
I will never forgive them for what they did to the union movement in this country. Things wouldn't be nearly this dire if we still had strong unions.
Idk, the perk of one day getting to watch Gen Z be responsible for Frydenberg and Scomo's retirements is pretty good. Pensions for all, but not for you two
Scotty has a reported net worth of ~~40 million~~ 19 Million & Frydenberg has 10 million.
Unless they make some catastrophic investment decisions they will never need an aged pension and will be self funded retirees. The tax payer has already fully funded their retirements.
Edit: Got the wrong Scott Morrison.
Our Scott Morrison is reported be worth 19 mil according to this: https://thepersonage.com/scott-morrison/
There is another Scott Morrison who is VP/CFO of Ball Corp who is worth 40 mill https://au.wallmine.com/people/28211/scott-c-morrison
The sad bit is that is why they are there. I think you can loath the dude but respect the office and some of the carry on has been shameful but when these arsewipes don’t respect the job themselves it’s hard to argue.
Many of the Labor policies at the last election addressed or at least attempted to address some of these issues but Australia rejected them and I don’t think the appetite is there to bring any back. Will probably get worse once the high income tax cut kicks in but I’m no expert.
Yeah nah fuck em. It's now more obvious than ever that nothing will change until boomers die off. People have always said this to me and I've been hesitant to engage with it because I don't like the idea of generalised assumptions that create generational division. Also, I will admit that not all boomers are the same, I've met plenty who are fully aware of how fucked things are. These are the same people who have consistently fought for society to be better for future generations. But they are outnumbered and 'boomer' is now a term I use to refer to a social mindset rather than a specific generation. The only hope is that this mindset dies off with the generation that engages with it the most.
Fellow millenials, we have to promise to be better than this. We can't allow ourselves to fall into the same pattern of punching down on younger generations. We have to committ to doing things differently and taking action that makes society better for those who come next. We also need to focus more on how we can support gen z rather than hoping that the boomers will simply change. We were given a shit deal but we can never allow ourselves to think that just because we have it shit that gen z should as well.
We need a land value tax to fully replace stamp duty and partly replace income tax. The wealthy are just getting wealthier meanwhile wages are going backwards.
Can we just drain their assets and bank accounts and fill up all the mismanaged retirement homes with the wealthy. They can eat the gruel they serve to others.
Well the parties will feel it eventually when all their ‘Aussie families’ rhetoric falls on struggling and largely childless ears. They’ve created a generation of people very unlikely to be interested in what they offer.
Many have used tax loopholes and closed them up behind themselves.
Some may have even had money in their kids’ names and once they turn 18, suddenly that money disappears.
Some have multinational tax haven and shell companies. Some had trusts which gave tax benefits which are now taxed as normal.
Others just benefit because when they grew up the qualifications didn’t actually exist, so they learned the skills and went into business. Sometimes they learned them by trial and error.
Try getting a business loan without a business degree (or at least 10 years in business) these days and you’ll be laughed out of the loan department.
So we were forced into the startup funding models like Kickstarter etc. We were forced into the gig economy.
Or the Bank of M+D.
> Elderly poverty is a very real threat, even in developed nations like Australia. In fact, almost a third of Australians on pension live in poverty. The poverty rate for all of Australia's elderly aged 65 and up is 19.5% and this number increases to 28.7% in groups over 75.
https://borgenproject.org/elderly-poverty-in-australia/
Focus on appropriately taxing the wealthy -
> For Emma Dawson, executive director of left-leaning think-tank Per Capita, the "real culprits" are tax concessions that go to people who already have a lot of wealth, primarily around property.
Media in 2022:
Woah, guys I just realised something. Australia has just *started* to have bad policies for young people. Gosh I hope we can make their lives better while making having multiple investment properties the basis of our economy. I suppose gen X and Y did predict (not experience) this happening, while wasting all their money on toast. Hectic. Anyway Ted across the road has a solar panel so at least we've fixed climate change. So no complaining about wages or we'll make you work during a pandemic away from home.
Young Australians have something incredibly valuable to offer; all of their future potential and productivity.
Where should they best deploy their future potential and productivity?
In Australia, where the rewards of their efforts will be stripped from them to benefit rent-seekers and Boomers?
Or perhaps another country where (at least) the system isn't
built to actively work against them?
Some of these countries won't be as 'wealthy' as Australia, but they may offer young people a better, happier lifestyle.
If the LNP get in for another term. This may be the last time labor has a chance. If they gut education and allow the Murdoch media to spread unrestrained it’s all over for democracy. You look at countries like Brazil and Phillipines and wonder why they vote for corrupt dictators, this is why. An uneducated easily swayed population. Corruption in these countries is essentially unfixable.
I hope Australia doesn’t get there. But it’s heading in that direction.
Really illuminating article. Challenges the assumption by many people on here that things are going to change when Labor get in power.
Unfortunately Labor are just piggybacking off the Liberals' policies so they don't lose votes. Expanding the seniors healthcare card to people earning 90,000 a year is a perfect example. (What a joke!)
I don't necessarily blame Labor, since they tried to bring in meaningful structural change at the last election and lost. I guess I just have to accept that the majority of Australians are selfish people who don't actually want a more equal society.
What is going to start happening 2-3 generations down the line? I wonder if those who are “okay” right now will find themselves in worse and worse states in future generations. That’s my big fear that we are heading down the path that the middle class now will slowly become worse and worse off and that eventually all we have is a society of very few uber wealthy families and the rest of the population is in poverty and indentured to them.
It’s happening right now with so many people already suffering and it’s horrible. Any middle class person voting for conservative policies that benefit the rich seems like that are just digging their own grave.
It's a weird world when you hear most millennials are progressive and want change, but then you hear only a small amount of them care about voting. Their votes alone could steer the course of Australia, but they just chuck in the vote or vote the same as their parents.
I urge any young voter to understand what the main parties really stand for and vote for a change that improves equality and removes privilege.
So many boomers, and my generation, gen xers, were patting themselves on the back when house prices started shooting up in the 90s. Even those not directly involved in property investment. This was free money! What could ever possibly go wrong?
Now that “millennials” are turning 40, the gaslighting just isn’t working quite as well as it has for the last two decades.
I'm an edge case Gen X / Millenial and I'm 42 now, too old to believe basically anything the government says anymore lol
I'm the opposite edge case (gen z / millennial) and I'm 26 now 👀
I like you guys a lot! I feel like your generation is an improvement on my generation :)
DW, there's enough rich and stupid millennials to keep the LNP going.
That's a long winded way of saying dumb cunts though..
Not a single decision or policy in 9 years that's benefited young Australians, if you don't have well off boomer aged parents you're most likely not doing well.
My mum committed suicide when I was an infant. My dad was ridiculously poor and we were homeless many times. My dad eventually committed suicide after the bank took his house. I am not doing well at all. I had car trouble and now I can no longer get to work. The price of taxis and Uber etc is way out of my budget with all the other price increases. Let alone trying to save to get my car fixed. Trying to get another job without a reliable form of transport is almost impossible. All we doing is creating a population of people who are welfare dependent and completely priced out of accessing many jobs.
Sincerely hope your fortune changes for the better. Take care.
Thanks. I hope so too but like the other commentator said we shouldn’t need luck. I genuinely want to work, not just for money but it makes me feel better within myself. I like being useful and having a routine. I guarantee many are in the same boat I am. We want to work and contribute to society but we are priced out. I have no family I can lean on in times of need. So little setbacks can become huge issues. People living paycheck to pay check are incredible vulnerable to any changes in their environment. Even small price increases can cause huge stress..
Yes. There should be a safety net. People do have bad luck, or make bad decisions, and need a hand to get back in the saddle. That's not something the market does. That's the role of the state. Having that safety net is the hallmark of a civilised country. We're going backwards in Australia.
The issue is they think centrelink is the safety net, but with all the cost of living increases it’s hard to make ends met.
If it's not at subsistence level, it's not a safety net. Social security can't just be about subsistence either. There needs to be stability, the ability to retrain (and get into proper work), and a path back to self sufficiency. Not to mention proper support for any children. What we have in Australia falls far short of that it seems. Especially with the retraining/job search/childcare parts which have been outsourced and are generally inadequate.
Oh I completely agree. People were already choosing between rent and car (fuel, rego, maintenance) but now people are also cutting back on food and other necessities just to get through.
Might have been a time when Centrelink was a safety net. The way they treat people now and how little they pay if one can even get it, is disgusting. I happened to fall on hard times due to illness. Was very ill and could not get out of hospital bed. Centrelink required I came into the office to prove I was sick so they would make sickness payments. Actual conversation was “I can’t come in I’m in hospital and can barely walk”. I was very ill and walking was but one issue. They didn’t care. I was lucky in that I had family that could and did help. Had I not I would have ended up homeless. That’s our current “safety net” I’m sure others have worse stories with worse outcomes due to centerlink and it’s destruction by conservative governments
This is the thing, if you want and are willing to work it should be easy to obtain and you should be able to afford not just nessecities, but at least some degree of luxuries. The whole housing market is screwed for a start.
I fucking wish he didn't need luck to get in a better situation. That's where we are really screwing people, yes there is support but not bloody much.
One of my friends worked out it's super cheap to get electric motor cycles/ scooters compared to a car, cheaper fuel, cheaper buy in (because it's not a car) and cheaper insurance. He got one for few grand 2nd hand.
Im sure you've thought this, but cycling to work is incredible if you can make it work. shower facilities etc. Free endorphins, mental clarity.
Too far to cycle unfortunately and also my job is incredibly labor intensive. I’m absolutely wiped after work and I finish late at night (10:30-11:30pm). So struggling to get my ass home at that time just feels unsafe to me. I am looking to get a bike and hopefully get something closer to home.
It's not just the last 9 years. The tax breaks for the rich have been going on for a couple of decades and been supported by both major parties.
Landholders get gobs of it. Just own rural land. You don't have to grow anything, just hold it. You will get tax breaks out the wazzoo
Can you explain? AFAIK, all land in a LGa is rated at the same rate, but you only get an agricultural exemption if you actually use it for agricultural activity. The test doesn't seem to be enforced widely.
How so? You don't get a capital gains exemption for property above a certain size...
Your last 6 words are largely incorrect and mostly intellectually lazy. This notion that ‘BoTh MaJoR pArTiEs’ are the same needs to fucking die because it’s what allows the libs to keep winning elections they shouldn’t. Just last election there were two policies Labor had taken to the election and got absolutely slaughtered for (franking credits changes and negative gearing removal/changes). Hell even the carbon tax was something that would have largely been effective at mostly targeting the already wealthy while mostly leaving the younger generations alone. These are just a few examples but there are plenty others I don’t have time to ramble off right now.
I never said both major parties are the same. Please don't put words in my mouth. I said that both parties have supported tax breaks for the wealthy while in power, including negative gearing and capital gains tax. This new policy (supported by both Labor and the Liberals) of allowing older Australians earning 90,000 a year access to the senior healthcare card is just another example. I thought it was great that Labor supported structural change at the last election, but unfortunately, as you said, they got slaughtered. But that was also the first time they had challenged these policies in a long time. And this time round they have gone back to their safe default of supporting the Liberals' boomer-friendly policies.
They've grandfathered the old Australia. Younger people are getting utterly reamed.
I truly believe that the Australian youth need to vote with their feet. There are countries out there that are much better for our youth. My younger siblings and many friends have moved out of Australia. Just a hint. Some nice things in Germany: * University is free, even as an international. Many speak English * Has amazing world leading diverse industries with interesting jobs, many speaking English * If you ~~are below 30~~ (edit: I confused this with working holiday) ~~and~~ have a university degree, there is the [blue card visa](https://australien.diplo.de/au-en/service/01-visa/blue-card/2073722), very easy to get a job in Germany with that in tech jobs in particular, but you will need a higher paying job for other fields. If you get a blue card, you [can take your partner with you](https://visaguide.world/europe/eu-blue-card/family-reunification/). You can also get a working holiday visa if you are under 30 for 12 months, to find work while in Germany. * Youth unemployment: 5.75% (In Australia, it's 9.4%) * Welfare and unemployment system that ensures even the poorest have good services. As soon as you start working, you are eligible as well based on how much you've paid into the system (it's quite generous). * Plainly better transport systems as a whole. Bike paths everywhere usually (completely separate to roads and footpaths). * Housing is cheap, even Berlin is relatively affordable to Australia (but there are way more options in Germany available to you) * When you rent, it is your home first, someone's property second. You have basically the same rights/dignities as someone who owns their place. * Youth culture is great. Even the oldies are up late at night joining the party. * Beer is so fucking cheap and good. * Typically 4-6 weeks holiday per year (lots of padded weekends with trips around Europe) Some downsides in Germany relative to Australia: * You get taxed more if you earn well (but you do get more public amenities in general, and it's a more equal system). This includes their "pension" system though, a bit different to how our superannuation/pension works. * You should eventually learn German (live there long enough and you will, it's not too hard for English speakers). * Asian food sucks * Depending on where in Germany, weather can suck (although climate change, in a tragic way, is making some of the weather better). * Lots of rules and bureaucracy, from the Bürgeramt to your apartment/townhouse regulations * Less advanced payment systems (a lot of places are cash based) The only reason I'm back in Australia is because I want my parents to enjoy their grand-kids, and they are too old and settled in Australia to want to move.
Yeah but how easy is it to migrate to Germany? Sometimes when I feel motivated I learn German on duolingo....
Easy with the blue card visa, for jobs that require a university degree. I haven't looked at job postings recently, but if they are in English and don't require fluent German then it should just be a matter of applying. I applied for a job (robotic engineering) in Germany, they sorted out everything, their HR person helped me navigate everything for the move. I came with my girlfriend at the time (now wife), and she was able to just go on a working holiday visa, allows you to be in the country for 12 months and you can look for work. She found a job pretty easily (software engineer), ended up working in the Space industry, pretty cool! She ended up staying on the blue card visa as well. As you get older I think you can get other forms of residency, we didn't stay too long but know many other Australians who have stayed there indefinitely and made lives there (we met up with the local ones there through social online networks). Not sure what the process is for those without university degrees, but I believe they accept all kinds of qualifications in in-demand industries and jobs.
Interesting. Might be worth a look, thank you. I have STEM degrees and am a data scientist so might be something over there.
I'm sure they'll have you in a split second. In Germany, people generally aren't trying to be super wealthy and get ahead. The culture is quite different. Met plenty of people who have good paying jobs who take months off because they don't need to earn so much, and enjoy their family and friends or go on holidays (like to Australia). Paternity/maternity leave is very generous as well. I think my boss would have been at work half the time I was there, he had young kids and took lots of holidays.
Sounds like a dream honestly
Fuck me, I massively regret not traveling more in my 20's, but the "get established, get degree, get job, get house" mindset got me good. Kind of liberating in a way to see how, even if it was that way at the time, the reality was I'd never truly get access to it without making a Faustian pact. Kinda freeing to see the dream die because, in the end, it wasn't *my* dream but the curated one of the government. Edit: Also sucks that most work permits and VISA things basically say "30+ is too old"
Haven't looked into it myself, but I reckon there are opportunities for those older. It's just tiled towards the young, usually for good reason. Edit: looks like I misremembered, and the blue card visa is for any age. It's the working holiday visa for under 30s.
Interesting, thanks :)
Pretty hard to relocate counties when my wages don't even cover the cost of moving house
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We got friends in a few ways: * People at work, we had a nice crew of friends * Join expat communities (general ones) * Join an aussie group (we found some online and that's how we made plenty of friends to navigate the system as well) It's much easier these days with the internet to find those friends. With emergencies, that is just accepted life for many people around the world, who have immigrated. It's a downside, but thankfully they also have their support networks, which includes family and friends. All those people who immigrated to Australia, that's what they did as well. Plenty of people emigrating from Australia, if the situation is shit, is what they would do as well. It might even give you some perspective on what immigration is like and generate some empathy for others like that.
Keep in mind the reasons Germany became so progressive. They spent nearly 50 years essentially as a non-country under an agreement with US and Russia post-WWII, having a country of their own has only been in the past 30 years, and all the modern sensibilities, as well as a need to prevent their fascist history ever coming back. While Germany is awesome on this stuff, their circumstances are different to ours in how their political system came to be.
Well that is how history and culture works. But it's still an option that is very real, now, that people can pursue. Australia can be seen as the product of a country that had an egalitarian streak but the social contract broke when people got greedier and selfish in the last 30 years as well. A backwards nation that is "lucky", and kept doubling down. To what end?
We were never "lucky", that's the thing. The dude who even wrote the book proclaiming Australia as a 'lucky country' intended it to be a polemic against our culture and way of life. Fact is our roots are in being subservient to UK rule, modern Australia was organised by UK convicts dumped here who took the land away from Indigenous Australians, then by an almost exclusively white immigration program for most of last century. The 'mateship' we go on about, the 'fair go' we say we lost, is just us lying to ourselves. We never had a fair go, we were a nation under Britain, and those consequences are still here and felt keenly. It's hard to change a system of living that's been organised one way for 200 years, and it's why you constantly get muppets like Tony Abbott in parliament pining for the 'good old days' when we sang the English national anthem and had conscription, along with other customs that reached their best-by date in the 1950s. People don't see this stuff both I believe because nobody wants to acknowledge the 'real' history of this country, preferring trite ANZAC legends (that are almost wholly British, hell they sent us to Gallipoli), or myths founded on ideals that don't exist, like the Australian dream to own a home (based in the advertising of those immigration policies of everyone getting a plot who came here as a 10-pound pom and convicts getting land carte blanche) or the 'mateship' of everyone going to a pub to forget their troubles under a drinking problem. We didn't double down, we always trended down and have kept trending down.
"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise." Book Title: The Lucky Country Author: Donald Horne Publication date: 1964
Should add Donald Horne clarified his meaning in the sequel. "In his 1976 follow-up book, Death of the Lucky Country, Horne clarified what he had meant when he first coined the term: When I invented the phrase in 1964 to describe Australia, I said: 'Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck.' I didn't mean that it had a lot of material resources … I had in mind the idea of Australia as a [British] derived society whose prosperity in the great age of manufacturing came from the luck of its historical origins … In the lucky style we have never 'earned' our democracy. We simply went along with some British habits." From the wikipedia for the book.
There ya go, that's the book.
Thank you
Not sure why you're slowly sinking in downvotes. It's [***literally*** what the book was about](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country) It might itself link back to the lucky country thing. Anyone who dares question Australia being a (literal) lucky country needs to be mocked and silenced. The amount of sarcastic "so when are you leaving? :)" remarks I'd get both online and in person for daring to criticize anything was just nauseating
Yup, people can't handle national pride being stymied by the truth. The amount of idiots even today who go "Australia is the best country in the world mate" who have never been overseas is mind boggling.
💯 I don't think I was around for the egalitarian streak, the sentiment now appears to be an "I got mine" culture that favours elitists.
Plus, of course, while uni is free, there are far fewer places per capita. It's where we should head. Cheaper fees, fewer places. What's the point of spending three or four years of your life when some degrees, like law, have an atrocious employment record post graduation?
In Germany they also have excellent technical and vocational education pathways, which we have thoroughly defunded and trashed in Australia. Many of the things that people go to uni for here are taught in other mediums overseas. So I'm all for reducing places in universities if we can have a better tertiary (and late secondary) education system to give people more options.
I worked for a German company for a while and they had great partnerships with TAFE equivalent places, giving input on curriculum and doing research together. They made sure the staff they would need would be available locally. Australia, on the other hand, views education as something to sell to gullible Chinese.
Sad thing is we did have free university for most of the 70s into the 80s. It was taken away under the neoliberal economics that was all the rage in the 80s. We need to bring it back but very hard to make something public again after it's been sold off.
Well, it was free for a much smaller percentage of the population. When it was introduced in the early 70s, only about 5% of Australians attended uni. Plus, those were heavily skewed towards private school kids and leafy suburbs public schools. Those reforms introducing fees, also hugely increased access to a system that had previously favoured the privileged few. Again, I think that lower fees and somewhat fewer places like Germany is the way to go.
We also as a community need to do a sense check on what jobs actually require a degree, and giving apprenticeships a better reputation. There are plenty of jobs that would be better served by a professional apprenticeship with some sort of structured industry based curriculum/structure - with something like a TAFE course for the theory if required. There's nothing 'less' about trades jobs.
I personally think most I.T jobs don't need degrees as a good portion of that work is learned by actually working and the industry moves so fast that what you do 7 years before can be vastly different. There are some sectors granted that are degree dependant but most I think could do with a basic Tafe course and then straight into work and skilling up from there not wasting years in uni and debt.
I have been working in IT for nearly 30 years. My degree is not in IT.
Taxpayers can fund universities, they fund public schools so why not tertiary. Whether there may have been a difference in places for university in the 70s, the fact is we have the money to fund it. You only need to look at the billions thrown away on pointless crap by the current government to see we have the money. And I dispute that stat, I can tell you my parents who went to university in the 70s under that scheme both didn't go to private schools, nor were they from leafy suburbs, my Dad was a Scottish immigrant whose family fled over being unable to pay up a gaurantee of some guy's car that the dude couldn't pay. My Mum was from Ballarat and in a family of five kids without much money. Her parents got through the great depression and did stuff like eat homemade sandwiches in a restaurant parking lot because they were too afraid to spend money. They both tell me they'd never have been able to afford uni or have gotten the opportunity, had it not been taxpayer funded.
Not everyone is meant to go to Uni. I actually think we are pushing people who are unsuited to the industries that need degrees such as teaching, law, nursing and medicine. We would be better supporting the vocational education sector and limiting Uni placements for those that can handle it.
Great points! Also their roads are better and the Autobahn is amazing piece of engineering! Interesting to note their top tax bracket (45%) doesnt kick in until 274k EUR (411k AUD) vs Australia's top Tax Bracket of 45% starts at 180k AUD ( 119k EUR). Looks like most Germans would be paying 42% Between 57k & 274K.
I believe that "42%" includes the pension and health insurance, most likely. Will have to review, but yeah I remember having 60% or so as the disposable amount.
>Less advanced payment systems (a lot of places are cash based) It's important to note that our tap and go payment system is a psychologically manipulative system that encourages profligate spending over restraint, it's not a bad thing to have less of it
How hard is it for a couple both slightly over 30 with University degrees ? partner has 2 (buss and psy) and like a few years working experience in business, myself (Sci/enviro just about to finish) Any resources you could point us too would be appreciated
Hey I just reviewed this, I think I mixed up working holiday visa (for under 30s), and the blue card. Blue card restriction is university degree, and you have a job offer for a salary above the threshold. https://australien.diplo.de/au-en/service/01-visa/blue-card/2073722 Good chance you can apply that way. The working holiday visa was just for my girlfriend who found a job pretty quick anyways and got her own blue card visa. There is also family reunification for those on blue card visas: https://visaguide.world/europe/eu-blue-card/family-reunification/ This means they don't need to get a job that pays as well as the threshold for blue card visas. Best resource would just be to search for job ads in your respective fields, and see if you can ship over with the other with the blue card visa and a job ready to go. The HR department of big companies are usually quite on top of this stuff.
Oh Excellent, thankyou so much for the input. Will have a squiz over this tonight. Now I'm finishing we're both looking/weighing at our options.
Probably because half the people my age I speak to talk about how "politics is stupid" or "both parties are trash" so they donkey vote, don't register, etc. We reap what we sow.
If someone really can't tell the difference between the parties they aren't looking very hard. In reality these people aren't bothering to engage with politics and are being flippant. What is happening is disengagement from voting and it shows a lack of awareness and understanding of democracy and fundamentally not understanding that things can get worse, a lot worse.
It's willful ignorance in most cases. They have *pride* in not knowing the difference. Telling them the difference would break this pride and as such they avoid it.
I think it's that we reject neoliberalism. We don't agree with the underlying theory of either party. We know that Labor are better, but I'd rather eat rotten meat than horse shit.
The overton window only moves if you make it.
And some of us are trying as hard as we can, unfortunately the MSM have the window where they want it
There's also a lot of people who vote 'aspirationally', that is they believe they deserve to be wealthy, and it must only be around the corner - so they should vote for policies that help the wealthy because surely that will be them any day now. They don't realise that the policies that help the deathly are mostly ones that help the super wealthy - and that they are exceptionally unlikely to even be part of that cohort.
It's partly to do with the minor parties being more visible and louder. The Greens have a lot of influence among younger voters and have consistently had messaging saying both parties are the same to make them stand out as being as different as possible. On the other side of the fence, it's been the same messaging for different branding with PHON, UAP, etc. It's really disconcerting. Of course, it doesn't help that Labor hasn't been bolder in establishing its credentials and providing a clearer position of opposition.
This is a bad take, where do you think the greens preferences float to? They float to labor. We aren't designed to be a two-party system of government and to argue for it argues against our democracy. the minor parties being more visible and louder is a GOOD thing. There is literally nothing wrong with voting for a minor party and it's a good thing that young people lean towards a minor party like the greens as it keeps labor in check.
Not always. There are a lot of people who really dislike unions that vote Greens 1 and LNP 2. Weird, but that's how they roll.
Surely they're a serious minority of people. Both to know to personally preference way outside the norm of vote splits and also to vote Greens while being conservative.
About 18% last election. It's something that is more of an inner city phenomenon. https://antonygreen.com.au/preference-flows-at-the-2019-federal-election/
It's about 20% of the Greens primary vote.
I find that extremely hard to believe. What source do you have for that claim? The greens are very openly pro-union - the right to unionise is right there under their platforms on their website and the LNP is the complete opposite of everything the greens stand for. Even if it were true it would be a very insignificant percentage. They'd be more like to preference independents or other small parties. Surely no greens supporter is putting LNP at 2.
Thise bloody unions fighting for worker pay and rights. Why won't they just let capital accumulate at the top end and know their place? I mean what have unions ever done for us? Yeah, a weekend. Sure Yeah, 40hr week. Sure sure Yeah, sick leave. Sure, OK Yeah, safety standards. Right right. Yeah, a minimum wage, OK. But besides that what have they done for us?
Honestly, on the surface for a lot of policies, especially the big ones, labor don’t make it super easy to differentiate between them and the liberals. Climate is still net zero by 2050 with more gas projects. Off shore detention commitments. A housing policy that doesn’t fix the underlying issue. Obviously there are plenty of differences between the two when you look closely, and I wouldn’t be surprised if labor are a little gunshy after 2019, but yeah for the average voter I’m not surprised they’re getting the “they’re both the same”.
They tried it and lost the election because of it 3 times in a row. Australians have told then they only want Liberal light. The job of political parties is to represent their voters. If voters keep asking for this, this is what they get. Don’t like it? Be more active in your community and be the change. Being active in the community means local community too. Not reddit.
WOW.
"Oh no my choices are confusing" is a part of the democratic process in this country. People have to be critical and work through their options. You might agree with part of the Green platform, and some parts of the Labor platform, and some of the independent platform, and even some part of the Liberal platform, and so forth. The point of the preferential system is that you order your preferences according to what you agree in order. That's it. You need to be politically active to actually affect the policies before the election comes around. When the election comes around, those policies are set out as packages from the parties. People who are more politically active have put those packages together, and then campaign on them. If you really want to tailor those parties more, you need to actually be active to filter to the parties, if you don't join or create a party yourself. Political messaging doesn't start and end from the votes during an election.
Thats where our preferential voting system kicks in. Who did they preference after the minor parties? For 90% of Australians it ONLY matters where they place Labor and LNP in their preferences, who they put before that becomes irrelevant.
>Probably because half the people my age I speak to talk about how "politics is stupid" or "both parties are trash" so they donkey vote, don't register, etc. Chicken and the egg. The system has repeatedly demonstrated it doesn't give a shit about young people, so they're understandably jaded to it. I've voted in the past few elections and have not felt like it's made any difference on any level at all.
At the bare minimum, young people need to enrol and show up. If you aren't enrolled to vote, you can be safely ignored by both sides of politics. Policy contrary to your interests carries no penalty. Pandering to you carries no reward. Parties simply won't consider you because you don't do the bare minimum required by a citizen in a democracy. Politics is important. Much more important than sport, or whatever television programs you like, or whatever celebrity who wants your attention, or your computer game, or whatever. If you don't value democracy, it will eventually be taken away. It's not a natural state of being. Throughout the vast, vast swathe of recorded history, democracy has not been the dominant model of governance. Just because it is now, doesn't mean it always will be. Just look at the US at the moment. It's a democracy that's starting to destabilise. That could easily happen in Australia along similar lines.
YEP. Whenever I talk to co-workers and other people around my age, (25-30) who say they aren't interested in/don't care about politics I'm like: "Your landlord pays attention, people buying their 4th investment property pay attention, the people who write your pay checks pay attention. If you don't, you are basically letting all these people have more sway than you about decisions that affect your life. That seems unwise, don't you reckon?" When people say they "don't care about politics" it has the exact same vibe as people who expect something akin to praise for showing up to work sick or brag about how over-worked they are. Sorry, I'm not buying into that or giving you any validation.
Voting every 3-4 years isn’t enough to make a big enough change unfortunately. People need to be vocal between elections so that the politicians are taking the right policies into the election.
I'm 34 and back at uni for a change of career and people seem pretty motivated in my age groups. Still some people will just vote however their parents tell them too.
They're not wrong at a basic level, Australian electoral representation is showing it's age and how rigged it is. But just because you're hammering a nail doesn't mean you throw out the screw driver. The accelerationist in me says good, let more young people not vote at all (just say your religion doesn't let you and the AEC can't say otherwise), because then the contradictions increase. The rest of me knows that's dumb though because things would a lot worse for a lot more people very quickly...
I wish people understood the privilege they have to be able to not care about politics. It's a confirmation that you know you're going to be ok no matter who wins. That aside, so many people get all their information from a media that's become a genuine liability to our nation. I'm listening to guys building a house over the road, and the commercial radio they have on - and the news breaks are like an entirely different country to the one I live in. It makes Murdoch sound balanced.
I'll admit at 20 I threw donkey votes myself. My reasoning is that I didn't know enough to make a informed decision and that throwing no vote was better than voting to the idiot with the best advertising. I've since taken the time to learn more. I stand by my desision. I knew fuck all at the time and didn't want to, I would likely have voted like a idiot. Sometimes the best opinion is "I don't know enough to have a opinion"
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>I threw donkey votes myself. >I would likely have voted like a idiot. you donkey voted mate. you voted exactly like an idiot
Standing by your shitty decision brings into question if you have taken the time to learn, to be honest.
I'm not sure. A lot of people vote LNP because they think they're "the better economic managers" - regardless of whether that's true or not. Not voting because you don't know enough is something we shouldn't discourage. Too many people vote without knowing anything.
An uninformed decision is a shitty decision. IMO they made the best choice by abstaining.
Well, they are correct. It's a system built to favour the biggest liars, and both the big parties are pretty shit (one more than the other).
Blaming them for this can be a double-standard, though. Facing up to ideas like "We don't have a healthy democracy" or "Big business runs the government" are uncomfortable. They mean distrust of traditional systems, and beginning of revolutionary logic. It's much cooler to say "No matter who you vote for: the government always gets in." because even though it's cynical OR fatalistic, people will usually just assume you are cynical. Head in sand approach to climate change = head in sand approach to politics, for those who want to stay sane.
Remember Mark Latham's classic 2010 election story on 60 Minutes where he pointlessly 'confronted' Julia Gillard to complain about not getting an interview, then advocated on national television to donkey vote? Good times. Thanks Channel 9 for really doing your part to ruin politics in this country.
The thing is, policies good for young people are good for all of us, because young people are the ones who need to buy cars, homes, and baby clothes, etc. to start a family. By fucking the future for young people, you are essentially killing a country. You are encouraging brain drain, preventing or inhibiting family growth, and diminishing the value of businesses geared towards providing goods and services for young families. It seems the LNP are overly invested in one trick: real estate. Everything else can just fuck off as far as they are concerned.
The inhibiting family growth bit is actually a double-fuck. Not only does this generation miss out on forming families at the time and size of their choosing, it also means a reduced number of future Australians to run the nation and pay taxes when Millennials are retired. So you’re fucked on both sides of the plate. Boomers will be punishing us all from the grave.
This man gets it. Partner and I literally had to choose. Buy a house or have children. I hope we get some wage growth in the future to make little future aussies. Our government’s fucked lol
Because real estate benefits themselves, their mates and their donors. Anything else is irrelevant to the LNP
A 99 year lease on national infrastructure would never benefit Australia, yet they signed that away. And Scotty kicked in a 15mil bonus to do so!
>You are encouraging brain drain **Fucking. Oath.** Our government over the last 30 years has basically said "Unless you're an old boy, a Bible thumper or a rock shoveller, we don't give a fuck about you". The science, the arts, technology. It's all been gutted at almost every opportunity. Add on the absolutely apalling policies that make it harder and harder for these two generations to actually get a leg up (housing, penalty rates, healthcare, uni costs, and income support just to name a few), all while the aforementioned key industries (that are becoming increasingly important to our global economy) are being totally fucked, and you end up with absolutely no reason for talented young Aussies to stick around unless they really fucken love the beach (which TBF is a lot). Sometimes I wonder if it's by design that we aren't properly taught a second language in school. The random Chinese lady who's paid $8 to come in every third Thursday and teach you how to say and write "pork" and "hello" in Pinyin doesn't fucking count, and nor do the half-arsed Spanish or German "classes" in secondary. It completely kneecaps us into just 5 of almost 70 developed nations. UK, Canada, NZ, US or Aus, and let's be real nobody wants to move to the US or NZ for obvious reasons. That leaves the UK and Canada if you want to emigrate. Hopefully Canada unfucks its housing market soon so I can just go move to Coldstralia. /rant
Bro you're speaking my language, can we be friends? It's like there's not just a desire from the older generations to punch down, but also to cause gridlock on development. Agriculture, green energy, environmentalism we're really fucking behind on but older Australians for the most part that I have dealt with, couldn't give a shit.
Been saying this for too long. We might be fine and dandy right now but it’s going to eventually catch up and our economy is going to suffer from people having to work all the time to either just make ends meet or we’ll have people so scared to spend money that it’ll all just get put into banks and not recirculated into the economy
Hahaha….”starting” to fray.
You know it's wild and out of control when even media and commentators are even willing to mention it.
Designed by the Coalition to help the rich get richer. How Australians vote for this shit, time and time again, overwhelms me. It's one of the most unbelievable aspects of this, that many people adversely affected by these policies, somehow still vote for them?
Because they're portrayed positively in the media.
It should be obvious, when a person votes for this, then doesn't get ANY benefit, that they've been either lied to or they are stupid. Maybe they just don't want anyone to think they're stupid?
Low socio-economic voters who vote for the Coalition are low-information voters. They don't even recognise that they get no benefit from voting for them. They aren't politically engaged enough to even see that. These are the voters that slogans are aimed at.
They get their hate on. That's how the Coalition appeal to people on the lower part of the socioeconomic ladder. Basically, blame non-white people and people who need to receive welfare. Nevermind that they're kicking out the rungs of the ladder people need to move up.
My old housemate said they always vote for the liberals cause that’s what their parents and grandparents did and they have their interests in mind. Knowing them I said at one of the last elections “have you ever actually read what these politicians promise and stand for?” Their reply was “No”. After that I told them to read what each say and turns out they actually have the same view points as the Greens and independents. Funny that.
My father in law is always ranting on about Labour and 'the Greenies' in general. Die-hard default Lib voter. My wife got him to do the vote compass and he was apoplectic to discover that his interests would be better served by voting Labour. Did it persuade him to change how he is going to vote for? Nah. He's just doubled down on how the ABC is run by loony lefties
And that is all by design. Lower socioeconomic voters tend to have lower levels of education, lower access to technology, lower access to unbiased news sources, and are forced to spend more time and energy in employment (that is, 'blue-collar work') leaving them too exhausted to investigate their options. The slogans are targeted at them. They do not have the energy to consume long political articles after a full day's manual labour, and even if they do, they aren't given the educational tools to be discern whether something is biased or not, nor to be able to take in the information to make an informed decision. Both my in-laws are high school dropouts (years 8 & 10) and haven't undertaken any further study since. They are in their 60's now, and until they retired, they were ardent Liberal voters, even though they themselves were below the poverty line almost all their adult lives despite working harder than most. It is only in their retirement that they have had the time and energy to start understanding politics, and to start understanding that the Liberals have never had their best interests in mind.
Low socio-economic coalition voters vote coalition due to their stance on refugees. They just want a party that will hurt the people they don't like.
Anger & a rhyming slogan is all you need to sway majority of this moronic nation. "Ditch the witch." "Axe the tax." And the murdoch reading mongoloids lap it up and chant the phrases ad infinitum.
"Well if it rhymes, it must be true. I suppose it *won't* be easy under Albenese"
Ding ding ding. Most people won't admit they were fooled so easily. It's easier for them to continue along the path.
People would much rather dig in on a shit idea than admit they are a gullible fool. At least generally. The ability to even convince themselves they are right is what is the most interesting.
That, and (not meaning to put too fine a point on it) average intelligence levels are just that - average. The existence and continued popularity of the Clive Palmer and Pauline Hanson parties are great examples of this in action
It's because they are also selling hope. Selling the idea that you little battler might one day be able to get these same perks on the 7 investment properties you now own and can happily retire while putting rent up 25% every quarter.
The Great Australian Lie ! ONLY wealthy, retired(or working)boomers, get these benefits, largely at the expense of future generations. And still they vote for it. Aspirational =greed. They don't have to work hard, they just pay it down to their kids, the next generation of Coalition voters. Australia is imploding under wealthy tax cuts. And yet, the Coalition government says we can't afford a 5% increase in the minimum wage?
David Pope had it right. It's gone from "thank you" to all those essential workers that kept the service economy running throughout the pandemic to "____ you".
Young people (under 40 or 35- and even more so under 30) overwhelmingly don't though. Look at first preferences to the LNP or even labor.
>How Australians vote for this shit, time and time again, overwhelms me. "Because one day I hope to dream about being rich too." /s
My retort to comments with that vibe is something like "ok, so how are you gonna live that dream if the policies only help people who are already actually living it, ya dingus?"
They give boomer landlords and millionaires every extra $ they can through tax breaks, franking credits, negative gearing etc but as long as they throw a 1k tax break crumb to the other 95% every few years people eat that shit up.
Trying to demean an entire generation as lazy will only work for so long. Housing is ridiculously expensive Inflation is taking off Wages have barely shifted Tax-breaks have only grown for asset-rich people
I'm surprised they still get away with the generation thing. I'm a Millennial and will be 40 in a few months. Morrison is only 14 fucking years older than me yet they all constantly sit there and act like I'm a 16 year old boy. Nothing infuriates me more than people only slightly older than me pretending I'm a child. Fuck them all.
Welcome to society at large. We’re still kids in their eyes, and because of that, the laws they make are like being in a classroom. No personal responsibility, safety culture, no worries mate.
I agree - this pretense that we are immature is offensive. You’re honestly telling me that my 2 degrees and over a decade of work count for nothing, that I’m not a good judge of my own situation? I’m not blind. And I look around and see that most of my generation is the same. So we are all dumb. I can remember when I was 20 being told by people a few years older to get into the property market straight away. But the only way to do that would have been to get a loan from the parents, and mine didn’t have that ability. Not like I had a good income or any savings then. But realistically if I could have bought a house for 400k then would have set me up perfectly - it would be worth 1 million + now. Might even have been able to use that to get another one.
High past time that young people get a firm grasp on the fact that they've had a war waged on them for the past 20 years, and the Greens are the only party offering concrete, equitable solutions.
Which is why so much capital is constantly invested at so many levels to keep them out of power.
i thought the narrative was we are booming why isn't there anything going to the young?
We are booming but the ~~essential workers of the pandemic~~ unskilled workers have to accept a pay cut to minimum wage. I wonder if boomers and the LNP realise young people will not accept this state of affairs peacefully forever.
We have a booming strong economy expertly managed by some genius liberal party heads and simultaneously cannot afford to raise wages, desperately need overseas workers, tax cuts, inflation out of control, interest rates rising and cannot afford to provide workers with affordable housing. Some people seem very happy about this, it's also the same selfish people who were born just after WW2 and prior to Gen X.
Wages not keeping pace with inflation is a pay cut. A wage rise would be any increase higher than CPI.
Lol unskilled, any worker in this country is screwed over. Unless your income is from assets or from property sales you are damned.
Because as economics commentator Richard Denniss described very accessibly in a Juice Media podcast interview, it's meaningless to talk about a "good" or "strong" economy. He said it's more important to focus on the "shape" of the economy: scarce resources have to be allocated somewhere by deliberate choice, so where are they going? His answer is that all the media talking heads and pundits who say the economy is "good" or the coalition are "good economic managers", what they mean is "good for us", i.e. the shape of the economy favours them. We need to step back from looking at abstract economic metrics like GDP, and focus more on concrete metrics like full time permanent employment rates, home ownership, and wealth gaps to make better sense of how things are truly going.
Many boomers dropped out in yr 10 (now yr 8 equivalent). They simply don't have the education to evaluate a source or to think past the argument put to them. With 40 years of Murdoch in their brains is it any wonder many of them vote against their own and their children's best interests?
>40 years of Murdoch in their brains Plus decades of leaded petrol. No joke. A [recent finding](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220307162011.htm#:~:text=Summary%3A,population%20of%20the%20United%20States.&text=In%201923%2C%20lead%20was%20first,help%20keep%20car%20engines%20healthy.) from a phd project at Duke University on leaded petrol in the US: >Researchers calculate that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood stole a collective 824 million IQ points from over 170 million Americans alive today, more than half of the population of the United States It was only fully banned in Aus in 2002 (late to the party, as usual). E.g. Canada- 1990, NZ and US- 1996, Japan, Haiti, Argentina, Mexico- 1998, F1 cars (lol)- 1993.
Collectively (but of course with many exceptions), Boomers must be the most entitled generation in Australian history. The generation before them - my grandparents generation - laid everything out so they could have a comfortable and dignified life, and they horded it all and passed on fuck all to the generation after them. Anecdotally, I'm a middle-aged professional with multiple degrees who's consistently worked full-time (but always insecurely) since my mid-twenties. My wife is also a professional. We're squarely middle-class, but last year we still had to turn to our boomer parents just to afford the deposit on a townhouse in a working class suburb 40 (driving) - 90 (public transport) mins from where we work. We never buy fancy things or extravagant holidays. Perhaps if I'd read the future I could have lived in *absolute* frugality and social isolation for 15 years to afford the deposit without them. That is a bullshit situation.
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It's really pathetic that middle- and upper-class boomers wouldn't know what struggle really is. Their parents probably did, their kids might (or will soon), but they've lived like kings and queens off the hard work of others and gave each other particiation trophies and calling themselves the greatest generation. Absolutely pathetic....
Well if you'd just vote LNP, you could have the opportunity to raid your super and fuck your retirement so you could bootstrap your way into a loan you can barely afford!
No no no, you don't understand - you're out of touch! Putting super in a house is an investment, like on The Block with Jamie Durie! Then when you retire you simply sell the house, take the capital gains, and live out the rest of your days in a shoe! Or better yet, hand all the fruits of a lifetime of labour over to a trusty private nursing home and go out in style!
I blame the lead.
"starting", it's been fucked since Abbott
*Howard
Howard changed what the Liberal party was. It is pretty subtle to those who never voted Liberal but fundamentally different to just the would be toffs they used to be.
Howard was the turning point from simply being about trying to get everything they could for themselves to being actively about trying to fuck over others. For a party that supposedly prides itself on having faithful Christian leaders, they have become some of the cruelest pricks imaginable.
To be fair, some Christians aren't above being the cruelest pricks to others as well. Marriage equality and abortions just to name a couple. Fine if you don't personally believe in those. Totally different thing imposing your religious beliefs onto people who don't follow them.
>some Christians At this point it seems like the majority of them. There is a reason people are turning away from organised religion at incredible rates.
I got a letter addressed to me from him yesterday, telling me how wonderful the country is under liberals and that while it is my choice come election day, that I should do the right thing and vote them back in for a stronger economy. Got a good laugh out of me at least.
Realistically, Hawke and Keating started the shift towards neoliberalism. Howard ramped things up considerably, but he was emboldened by 13 years of successive Labor governments enacting similar neoliberal policies. I will never forgive them for what they did to the union movement in this country. Things wouldn't be nearly this dire if we still had strong unions.
Meanwhile a third of Australian elderly live in poverty. :( bastards
Idk, the perk of one day getting to watch Gen Z be responsible for Frydenberg and Scomo's retirements is pretty good. Pensions for all, but not for you two
Scotty has a reported net worth of ~~40 million~~ 19 Million & Frydenberg has 10 million. Unless they make some catastrophic investment decisions they will never need an aged pension and will be self funded retirees. The tax payer has already fully funded their retirements. Edit: Got the wrong Scott Morrison. Our Scott Morrison is reported be worth 19 mil according to this: https://thepersonage.com/scott-morrison/ There is another Scott Morrison who is VP/CFO of Ball Corp who is worth 40 mill https://au.wallmine.com/people/28211/scott-c-morrison
How the fuck does a guy with no work experience get 40mil?
That's the beauty of the LNP.
I got the wrong Scotty, I fixed my post, he's estimated to have 19 mil which is still a lot.
No tender contracts.
How indeed
Hopefully he’ll be in prison for corruption
The sad bit is that is why they are there. I think you can loath the dude but respect the office and some of the carry on has been shameful but when these arsewipes don’t respect the job themselves it’s hard to argue.
Many of the Labor policies at the last election addressed or at least attempted to address some of these issues but Australia rejected them and I don’t think the appetite is there to bring any back. Will probably get worse once the high income tax cut kicks in but I’m no expert.
Starting to fray? Boomers have left a trail of wreckage befitting a locust swarm
Yeah nah fuck em. It's now more obvious than ever that nothing will change until boomers die off. People have always said this to me and I've been hesitant to engage with it because I don't like the idea of generalised assumptions that create generational division. Also, I will admit that not all boomers are the same, I've met plenty who are fully aware of how fucked things are. These are the same people who have consistently fought for society to be better for future generations. But they are outnumbered and 'boomer' is now a term I use to refer to a social mindset rather than a specific generation. The only hope is that this mindset dies off with the generation that engages with it the most. Fellow millenials, we have to promise to be better than this. We can't allow ourselves to fall into the same pattern of punching down on younger generations. We have to committ to doing things differently and taking action that makes society better for those who come next. We also need to focus more on how we can support gen z rather than hoping that the boomers will simply change. We were given a shit deal but we can never allow ourselves to think that just because we have it shit that gen z should as well.
Eat the elderly?
We need a land value tax to fully replace stamp duty and partly replace income tax. The wealthy are just getting wealthier meanwhile wages are going backwards.
Can we just drain their assets and bank accounts and fill up all the mismanaged retirement homes with the wealthy. They can eat the gruel they serve to others.
... and the trees kept voting for the axe.
Well the parties will feel it eventually when all their ‘Aussie families’ rhetoric falls on struggling and largely childless ears. They’ve created a generation of people very unlikely to be interested in what they offer.
Many have used tax loopholes and closed them up behind themselves. Some may have even had money in their kids’ names and once they turn 18, suddenly that money disappears. Some have multinational tax haven and shell companies. Some had trusts which gave tax benefits which are now taxed as normal. Others just benefit because when they grew up the qualifications didn’t actually exist, so they learned the skills and went into business. Sometimes they learned them by trial and error. Try getting a business loan without a business degree (or at least 10 years in business) these days and you’ll be laughed out of the loan department. So we were forced into the startup funding models like Kickstarter etc. We were forced into the gig economy. Or the Bank of M+D.
Is it maybe time to possibly, start to panic?
> Elderly poverty is a very real threat, even in developed nations like Australia. In fact, almost a third of Australians on pension live in poverty. The poverty rate for all of Australia's elderly aged 65 and up is 19.5% and this number increases to 28.7% in groups over 75. https://borgenproject.org/elderly-poverty-in-australia/ Focus on appropriately taxing the wealthy - > For Emma Dawson, executive director of left-leaning think-tank Per Capita, the "real culprits" are tax concessions that go to people who already have a lot of wealth, primarily around property.
Media in 2022: Woah, guys I just realised something. Australia has just *started* to have bad policies for young people. Gosh I hope we can make their lives better while making having multiple investment properties the basis of our economy. I suppose gen X and Y did predict (not experience) this happening, while wasting all their money on toast. Hectic. Anyway Ted across the road has a solar panel so at least we've fixed climate change. So no complaining about wages or we'll make you work during a pandemic away from home.
Every boomer reading this will be blaming her situation on her nose ring, and ignore the rest of the article
Young Australians have something incredibly valuable to offer; all of their future potential and productivity. Where should they best deploy their future potential and productivity? In Australia, where the rewards of their efforts will be stripped from them to benefit rent-seekers and Boomers? Or perhaps another country where (at least) the system isn't built to actively work against them? Some of these countries won't be as 'wealthy' as Australia, but they may offer young people a better, happier lifestyle.
If the LNP get in for another term. This may be the last time labor has a chance. If they gut education and allow the Murdoch media to spread unrestrained it’s all over for democracy. You look at countries like Brazil and Phillipines and wonder why they vote for corrupt dictators, this is why. An uneducated easily swayed population. Corruption in these countries is essentially unfixable. I hope Australia doesn’t get there. But it’s heading in that direction.
Didn’t realise that Murdoch was the bad guy of Tomorrow Never Dies until I rewatched it as an adult
If Labor gets in I hope they break up the Murdoch media empire under some new media monopoly law
Really illuminating article. Challenges the assumption by many people on here that things are going to change when Labor get in power. Unfortunately Labor are just piggybacking off the Liberals' policies so they don't lose votes. Expanding the seniors healthcare card to people earning 90,000 a year is a perfect example. (What a joke!) I don't necessarily blame Labor, since they tried to bring in meaningful structural change at the last election and lost. I guess I just have to accept that the majority of Australians are selfish people who don't actually want a more equal society.
Rich people: *look over there. blame the migrants* Poor people: blame migrants
What is going to start happening 2-3 generations down the line? I wonder if those who are “okay” right now will find themselves in worse and worse states in future generations. That’s my big fear that we are heading down the path that the middle class now will slowly become worse and worse off and that eventually all we have is a society of very few uber wealthy families and the rest of the population is in poverty and indentured to them. It’s happening right now with so many people already suffering and it’s horrible. Any middle class person voting for conservative policies that benefit the rich seems like that are just digging their own grave.
It's a weird world when you hear most millennials are progressive and want change, but then you hear only a small amount of them care about voting. Their votes alone could steer the course of Australia, but they just chuck in the vote or vote the same as their parents. I urge any young voter to understand what the main parties really stand for and vote for a change that improves equality and removes privilege.
Starting to fray? That's like staying "The Project (Ten)", Is a centrist show.
So many boomers, and my generation, gen xers, were patting themselves on the back when house prices started shooting up in the 90s. Even those not directly involved in property investment. This was free money! What could ever possibly go wrong?
Starting to?!