Flem274*

The annoying thing is that I have no grand designs. I want to be able to save the money to own a little house and ride bikes. That's it. One day I'd love to have a stab at amateur racing, heck maybe I can be better at it than I was at cricket (I was crap at cricket). But they've taken the bikes I like (emissions rules. It's a long story), the roads I like, half our race tracks and my ability save the money (t was something that would have been very easy to do in early 00's, simply due to the lower in housing repayments). At this stage in my still immature brain I'm not thinking of much else.

Yeah I'm weird, and a bit misanthropic, but I just want the same opportunities open that I would have had twenty years ago.

You might have hope, and that's a good thing. I'm far too analytical. I can't switch my brain off. Great for getting prizes and scholarships (though somehow not jobs), but I just can't stop thinking about issues. Control needs to be wrested from the central banks and speculators, but I can't see it happening. Too many people think these things help us, or are too focussed on global warming instead. It's gonna be a massive rebuilding effort.

I've seen his posts on other things, I'll think I'll stay out of that one. Interestingly the topic was broached with respect to the COVID recovery by a guy I work with. He's an actual economist and has worked in the field around that, and he pretty had the same view as me. It's not adding to growth, it just keep wages down and prices up. I also found the actual study used by Scott Morrison, and the benefit is tiny (0.15% extra GDP/pp/yr), we're actually well over the optimum and the model used overestimated growth anyway, and there's never been a debate on costs.

Big apologies for spamming your profile like this.

My main concern is that right now we are enacting the same loose-money 'stimulus' that has depressed Europe and the US for a decade and that caused the tech crash, GFC and now this crash. COVID was just just a trigger, the whole lot was ready to go anyway. And the US Fed in particular is pumping the bubble right back up again.
I can only see this ending in stagnation like Japan, possibly with a horrible denouement. I don't know how many times the cycle can go round. We need to end Keynesian economics and current structures. They're crushing my future before it's even started. I can't sleep, can't work, can't think sometimes. I have no hope.

We never had these levels any time prior to 06/07 or so (historic is 80-140k/yr, recent 200-240k). They were never needed for growth. They largely to provide a prop to an unsustainable industry, dilute labour and produce a facade of growth as per capita wealth declines. Our economy is not cut out for growth. We're a banana er... monarchy relying on iron ore and coal.

Seems these industries and investors have a god-given right to get rich. They've delayed anti-money laundering legislation for over 13 years that would force accountants and RE agents to report sus transactions. It is thought that $1 billion a year of foreign property investment is likely money laundering. They've successfully kept in place a ridiculous tax discount making it far cheaper to rent out a house than live in it. They got the govt. to put in place a 'first home buyers grant' or $20k, prices instantly shot up $80k (1/4 or less deposit). Now they're lobbying for a $40-50k grant, that will see prices shoot up by $100k or more, in a depression. It's a direct subsidy to an unsustainable industry. They're lobbying intensely to take immigration to record highs. The RBA spruiks property in their reports. I know central banks are corrupt, but WTF?

The main problem is that immigration is crucial to our economic mismanagement. Since the GFC the govt and RBA decided that housing would be the main driver of the economy creating a massively bloated construction sector. Loose monetary policy and high foreign investment enabled a huge bubble in the East. This didn't happen in Perth and Adelaide to nearly the same extent as they've had less population growth. The immigration is the spark for the speculative fire.

There are actually tens of thousands of vacant investment properties in Mel and Syd. They rely on population growth to keep pressure on land prices. If you cut immigration prices might fall 25-30%, and this isn't acceptable to those invested in this distorted, heavily subsidised market. These people have huge sway, and include a lot of our politicians and senior public servants. There is a powerful lobby group behind the bloated real estate and construction industries.

Last night I actually realised how wrong Spark's 'clinching argument' with that chart was. The much lower looking bump actually represents twice the number of people as the higher one form the late sixties. Resources are constrained by absolute changes, not relative. You can argue about the carrying capacity but issues will come in well short of that. The green movement has meant no major dams have been built for Syd/Melb for decades and our electricity grid is just barely scraping by in summer, destabilised by irregular renewables and the loss of old coal stations. We need to fix those problems first.

I've read the papers Spark was talking about, and some recent, Aus specific-ones. Basically the immigration 'bump' is small but there is a labour (hence wage) dilution effect. If you take the 50 we had very cheap land, few regulations, a huge potential to grow, hence the extra growth from immigration would well outweigh any wage dilution.

It's not the Menzies era anymore. We're highly regulated, very expensive (the cost of commercial rent is a huge issue) and major projects take twice as long to approve and complete as in the US or Europe. Heck, it often takes six months to get permission to extend a patio. We simply don't have the growth potential, hence big working-population increases dilute wages with no growth. The business environment needs fixing, especially in the Eastern states.

From a classical economics view, greatly simplified, growth occurs from the value of people's production going up, something that occurs though saving, investment & entrepreneurialism. The idea of aggregate demand is meaningless as ones ability to demand is generated through ability to produce (Say's law) so 'demand deficiency' is not possible. Merely adding jobs won't do it, nor will just adding people, but that does come with real costs. Hence the population can grow without any growth in individual wealth.

The jobs issue is not 'jobs Australians won't do', the issue is skilled mig. visas for jobs which have huge labour surpluses. Geology is one such job, many jobs I applied for get 30 applicants a position. The industry association I was a member of had a figure that 1 year in-field unemployment for graduates is 80%. This is common in STEM here. Skilled visa holders aren't bringing anything in that isn't there already.

Idiot me posted this on my own profile:

I don't see that attitude going away any time soon. I don't know about you, but over the past couple of years, esp. since I started reading about the influence of the derivatives market, I think the whole system will need to come crashing down first. And in this case immigration is a big part of people gaming the system in their favour (I can explain more if you want).
The ones who say they're saving everything are the ones preventing me from saving for a rainy day, and I don't have anyone to vote for either. I don't the problems going away after the disease, and it's something that really keeps me up at night.
Would you like me explain my view from an economics standpoint? I discovered classical economics, including its pre-Samuelson textbooks about two years ago and it explains why I made the post I did. I think it provides a good explanation of the past twenty or so years.

Please?

I don't suppose you've had a combination of seeing all your hopes for the future evaporate and a consideration of things from a classical economics point of view have you?

location needs the removed by dan reference

Not sure you want one of my rants. Bit hard when it's major issues troubling your mind and you see the future just being **** and can barely work. On the bright side, at least I still have a job.

Not really.

And again.

You're up on CPL.

pick ur team

There might be injuries lol