Why?

[sanj]

marc, you keep claiming i have not answered your queries. i have, repeatedly but im not going to do so again and you have chosen to ignore them. also, me saying your post was incorrect does not mean im calling you a liar or an idiot, it means your post was incorrect.

i stand by my claim that what you said was incorrect, the majority of people in this country (ie over 50%) have not had real wage drops over the last 5 years.

that is all i said, since then you have chosen to get all upset about it.

quite frankly it is quite comical. you got something wrong, it really isnt a big deal. i get things wrong all the time too, you dont see me having 3 day hissy fits about it.

unless you are in the minority of folks whose industry has seen fabulous wage increases in the last 5 years, the majority of folks are experiencing ever-increasing living costs across the board, while wages are not going up by much.

this was your post in question, i still maintain that over 50% of people in this country have not seen their costs increase by greater than their wages over the last 5 years. feel free to provide me any proof that im wrong, i dont have a dog in this fight and if im wrong ill happily admit it.

 

[strongy1986]

A lot of smart people have posted on this thread

Problem is that they don't realise that not everyone is as smart (or maybe as stupid) as them

The last thing you need is all the stupid people without jobs, you can 'up skill' people all you like but it won't change who they are

The more I think about it we are becoming the USA - a gulf between rich and poor
Just keep the stupid people in a job and we'll all be fine. Keep them out of a job and you will want to live in a gated community

Also....
Bunnings won't be taken over by an online model... I can't remember the last time I was half way through doing something and thinking oh maybe I can order that online because it's 10% cheaper - if you need it you need it there and then

 

[Spades]

A lot of smart people have posted on this thread

Problem is that they don't realise that not everyone is as smart (or maybe as stupid) as them

The last thing you need is all the stupid people without jobs, you can 'up skill' people all you like but it won't change who they are

The more I think about it we are becoming the USA - a gulf between rich and poor
Just keep the stupid people in a job and we'll all be fine.I agree Keep them out of a job and you will want to live in a gated communityHuh S Africa?

Also....
Bunnings won't be taken over by an online model... I can't remember the last time I was half way through doing something and thinking oh maybe I can order that online because it's 10% cheaper - if you need it you need it there and then

Bunnings bar online has masters as compo.

 

[lizzie]

Also....
Bunnings won't be taken over by an online model... I can't remember the last time I was half way through doing something and thinking oh maybe I can order that online because it's 10% cheaper - if you need it you need it there and then

wellll - not Bunning - but I did order 3 dresses for summer online from the USA yesterday ... $45 total including postage. That's insane.

 

[Deltaberry]

Problem is that they don't realise that not everyone is as smart (or maybe as stupid) as them

The last thing you need is all the stupid people without jobs, you can 'up skill' people all you like but it won't change who they are

That's true. Some things never change.

Even Jesus said, the poor you always have with you.

I guess this discussion has been about the relativities of how poor people are. But as I said on many occassions, certain demographics will always do better, other demographics will always struggle. You can usually segregate this based on suburbs because, after all, Sydney and Melbourne (which represents half of Australia and the wealthier half) is a feudal society. This article today sums it up:

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/tax-inner-suburbs-to-service-the-outer-20140815-103y3d.html

That's why even 5 years ago I advocated on this thread to focus on inner city suburbs, not outer suburbs.

 

[lizzie]

Even Jesus said, the poor you always have with you.

I have wondered if, when he said "the meek will inherit the earth" - he just simply meant the not-so-smart would eventually outbreed those with nouse

 

[Deltaberry]

I have wondered if, when he said "the meek will inherit the earth" - he just simply meant the not-so-smart would eventually outbreed those with nouse

Probably

We are probably the only species on this planet that has in some sense stopped evolving because the good genes breed less because they all focus on making money, enjoying life etc (yes flame me please) and the bad genes breed like rabbits, probably because they don't have much else to do (flameeeess).

I think the apes are on the rise.

 

[strongy1986]

Probably

We are probably the only species on this planet that has in some sense stopped evolving because the good genes breed less because they all focus on making money, enjoying life etc (yes flame me please) and the bad genes breed like rabbits, probably because they don't have much else to do (flameeeess).

I think the apes are on the rise.

Made a similar observation when visiting several large shopping centres in outer suburbs lately (south east more than 30ks). Lots of people just wandering around wasting their weekend many had several young children. The rate at which they breed in those suburbs would be about triple To most suburbs with higher entry barriers I would think. Of course there are exceptions to everything though
I think some suburbs such as seaford , frankston will go the right way even though they are a long way out whilst I'm not so confident about your pakenhams, cranbourne and so forth

 

[BayView]

Made a similar observation when visiting several large shopping centres in outer suburbs lately (south east more than 30ks). Lots of people just wandering around wasting their weekend many had several young children. The rate at which they breed in those suburbs would be about triple To most suburbs with higher entry barriers I would think. Of course there are exceptions to everything though
I think some suburbs such as seaford , frankston will go the right way even though they are a long way out whilst I'm not so confident about your pakenhams, cranbourne and so forth

As a generalisation; from my observation of folks in not only Aus, but the USA; the pattern is definitely that the less educated, the lower income, welfare, criminal etc segment of society are breeding the most.

The higher-achiever/more desirable and useful to the planet element are not.

The rest of the planet? I can only go by what I see on the teev, and what I see seems to support the theory

The standard of humans is not increasing among the masses - it's decreasing and becoming more anarchistic each generation.

Trailer trash and ferals, Terrorism, fundamentalism crazies with machetes and rockets, multiple generational welfare families, ambulance chaser lawyers who get guilty folks off on minor technicalities for all sorts of crimes and misdemeanours...the list is endless of the erosion of what is right and common sense, pride and dignity and folks don't care that they're getting away with being a rat dropping...they are proud in many instances.

We are blasting away at creating a Tsunami of humans who will destroy the planet in various ways. We are definitely on a path to over-population...like mice in a cage...reproducing ourselves towards a slow suffocation.

Hopefully the fewer good ones can achieve enough to correct the destruction in time.

 

[The Fence]

Feeds into this statement:

Bayview, i'm pretty sure that most folk wont ever claim that life has gotten easier. There are behavioural elements at play. For example, the public screaming murder at some very basic and legitimate 2014 budget changes is an example of the behavioural mindset.

The FACTS are, we have grown for 2 decades straight. 2 decades. It is extraordinary. These conditions have had a large REAL income effect for the large majority of Australians (see Budget chart that MarkB has shown). Sure the distribution of these gains are skewed, but that doesn't mean that there haven't been gains.

Unemployment is an issue at the moment and the economy is going through a cyclical adjustment. Unfortunately there are more people out there doing it tough right now - its not nearly that bad.

I'm with Sanj - this isn't a sample of the SS community - the facts are what they are.

We could go back to 4.4% unemployment, somebody somewhere (or rather, most people, everywhere) would be thinking that they're hard done by.

There you have it, full circle.
Over and out!

 

[C Stewart]

The more I think about it we are becoming the USA - a gulf between rich and poor
Just keep the stupid people in a job and we'll all be fine. Keep them out of a job and you will want to live in a gated community

Yeah, can't help but agree with this - there's only so far you can separate people's experiences before some fundamental things start to go wrong.

 

[tom32]

Well for me;

Real wage drop: check
Cutting back on unnecessary spending: check
Doing it tough: not yet but planning that we could be.

I think thoughts to the future are the biggest issue. I'd be happy on my current wage into the future but even a small cut back in wages in a new job has me reeling and worrying even though recent history has seen ridiculously high wages for many and this is really return to normal. That said I'm super exposed to wa mining and civils construction so I probably have justification for conservatism.

An anecdote to finish with respect to the op; I had a Holden Astra, the old euro built ones. 40,000 km I left it between services. I changed out oil every 10,000km or so, not filters just drained and refiled. whenever the spanner symbol popped up on my dash. Every second service I.e 80k apart I did a timing belt service which was near 1000 dollars. Anyway I started calling it the cockroach cause it wouldn't die or even give trouble.

So my thpughts on the people not servicing as regularly as a few years back two things are at play;

1. Modern vehicles (even 12-15yo) have warning lights when something is on the way out which you can fix then. Sure there are risks with the likes of timing belts but for the main you can get away with reacting.

2. Servicing relative to the cost of cars is expensive now. You can buy a decent reliable car for 5k and run it into the ground over 50k km which is probably cheaper than servicing every 10k km.

Don't want to ruin your day but I think this could be the reason why total spend at mechanics might be decreasing.

All that said I agree with your premise; things are tougher than the numbers suggest.!

 

[BayView]

So my thpughts on the people not servicing as regularly as a few years back two things are at play;

1. Modern vehicles (even 12-15yo) have warning lights when something is on the way out which you can fix then. Sure there are risks with the likes of timing belts but for the main you can get away with reacting.

2. Servicing relative to the cost of cars is expensive now. You can buy a decent reliable car for 5k and run it into the ground over 50k km which is probably cheaper than servicing every 10k km.

Don't want to ruin your day but I think this could be the reason why total spend at mechanics might be decreasing.

All that said I agree with your premise; things are tougher than the numbers suggest.!

Speaking of this;

A couple of weeks a go a lady came in who I recognised, but hadn't remembered seeing lately.

She said she was one of our customers.

Wanted to get some new tyres, and when she brought the car in for the tyres, I checked her rego on the computer.

Last service was due in Nov, in 2010...and now overdue for service by 105,000km's!!

She still hasn't come back in for that service, but the tyres are good!